Posts by Jen Hay
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If only there were some kind of linguist around who might set things straight, someone amused rather than offended by up-thread comments about her husband...
You called?
Well since you ask..., I think it probably depends how much of a googler you are.
If you do it, say, once a month, then 'Google' is a proper noun and resyllabification will lead to confusion. The Xerox example doesn't really work for me cause it can't be resyllabified anyway. But if you held a Dougal Stevenson theme party, which involved painting portraits of him on every wall, I think you'd be 'Dougalling' up your house, not 'Dougling' it.
However, if you do it, say, once every 10 minutes, then 'Google' is no longer a proper noun, it's a way of life. And ways of life should have nice pleasing syllable structure hence 'googling'
So my call is everyone is right, and you should take your preference as an indication of your own personal geekiness levels.
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Thanks everyone for all the nice birthday wishes for Bobster.
I should clarify that it's not exactly that I was in denial - believe me, it FELT like I was in labour. It's just that the hospital midwives kept telling me that the attempted induction had failed, and that I was just having a few 'prostin niggles' (prostin being the induction drug).
I should also clarify that I am not a total geek. But I had been without email access for the previous two weeks, and just that day, thanks to the generosity of Paul Brislen, I had finally gained access to the many hundreds of emails that were stacking up in my account. So I was just working through them with my finger on the delete key between (what we now know were) contractions.
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Linger:
For the whole year. After Riverton, we'll be tripping around, including stops in Wellington, Sydney, New York, Berlin, Newcastle upon Tyne and San Francisco. And all with a bad baby in tow. We probably need our heads read.
Shep:
We exchanged a house on the flat for a house on a bit of a hill, which is something, at least. Since David has declared we are never moving again, we'll just have to cross our fingers that the hill is big enough.
The famous Beachhouse Cafe is just along the road from our Riverton crib. This is where David procures his beer and chocolate cake while I look on wistfully wishing that the baby wasn't allergic to milk. Although, on reflection, it seems a bit redundant me avoiding alcohol, as the baby gets to sample beer directly out of his father's bottle.
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We sold the gorgeous house on the Avon in order to buy another gorgeous house on the Avon - 600 metres up river, and big enough to accommodate all our books, David's many musical instruments, and Bob's small mountain of stuff.
Since our path home from Riverton to Christchurch will be rather indirect, it has some lucky renters in there for the next year.
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Nope, those are the same. I can, however, distinguish between a beer and a bear.
Very handy skill.
Most of the young people we've recorded who make some distinction between hear and hair, or fear and fare, don't tend to distinguish between beer and bear. I.e. they've learned the distinction from spelling rather than 'natively', and it breaks down where the spelling doesn't line up with the pronunciation exactly.
So - yes - it seems you do indeed buck the trend!
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As for that pig-ugly final r you mention, it's endemic amongst certain TV presenters, Mark Sainsbury being one. "Now available" becomes "Nau Ravailable". They cannot pronounce a final W for money. Puckering practice needed.
Oh no - that's a different /r/ - my favourite!! Intrusive /r/. Like most NZers have in - 'ma-r-and pa', 'draw-r-and sketch', 'vienna-r-and-berlin'.
It's not a 'final r' - it only occurs between vowels, so only turns up when the next word begins with a vowel. Much to my delight, it's extended to a new environment - after the vowel in 'now', 'how', 'plough' etc. There are good reasons for this, and it rocks. I'm building my entire career on it :)
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Stephen wrote:
Any word on the phenomenon of pronouncing a distinct final "r"? I've noticed that a lot in the last 5 years or so, mostly among young Polynesians but also more generally.
Yes, that's been documented. Mainly in the North, and mainly in young speakers of Maori and Pasifika English.
Lyndon wrote:
I'm guess, but I'm not sure it's not being able to distinguish so much as not bother - a change in pronunciation rather than phonetic capability
The change in pronunciation comes first - but for people who have the merger, they genuinely feel they can't hear the difference between the vowels. (though experiments show that - at some level - they actually still can).
And yes - there's a clear social class element - the merger has always been most advanced for 'working class' speakers. But by now it's pretty much spread throughout society & isn't a class marker for young people.
Lucy wrote:
Well, I must be bucking a trend - I'm twenty-one and pronounce near and square quite differently
I'm surprised! Do you also pronounce 'bear' and 'bare' differently?
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(ii) Less frequently commented on, though, is the fact that this merger of the two front centring diphthongs is part of a larger pattern. Younger NZers also merge two vowels that may be regarded as back centring diphthongs: thus "sure" and "shore" are also homophones.
Interesting suggestion - I've never really thought of them as linked. The sure-shore merger is merging on the lower vowel ('shore'), and for many speakers is actually a monophthong. Plus the two mergers are progressing through different mechanisms - the sure-shore one is jumping from word to word, so most speakers still have the original 'sure' vowel in words like 'cure' for example. The near-square one affects all words containing those vowels.
I think the NEAR-SQUARE merger is more likely linked to the NZ short front vowel shift - the thing that makes 'head' sound like 'heed' (and 'pen' sound like 'peen'). Since the vowels in 'head' and 'heed' are the approximate starting points for the vowels in 'square' and 'near' respectively - once they become too similar, the diphthongs become hard to keep apart. (but we can still keep 'head' and 'heed' apart using other tricks, like vowel length).
I am 33 and have never pronounced 'fear' and 'square' or 'hear' and 'hair' the same... am I the last of a dying breed?
yep!
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I'm an Aquarius and I was just wondering whether the dwarfs who are going to drive fish-hooks under my knee-caps also happen to be lesbian? Undoubtedly an unlucky day for me, but it could perhaps be a lucky day for Public Address.
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>And yes, if I had to guess, I would have guessed male, no idea why
It's probably cause male and female names in English show different properties, and 'anjum' seems to be closer to the typical profile for male names than female names. This is because:
- it's two syllables (female names are more likely to be three syllables)
- it ends in a consonant (female names are more likely to end in vowels)
- the final vowel is a short vowel (more typical of male than female names)(gratuitous self-reference:
Wright, Saundra, Hay, Jennifer and Tessa Bent (2005) Ladies first? Phonology, frequency, and the naming conspiracy. In Linguistics 44(3), 2005, 531-561).