I say Mahster, you say Masster

[pne]

Sometimes I think that the fact that my idiolect has the TRAP/BATH split means that I speak a prestige dialect.

(And that British varieties which don't have the split are not as close to the standard.)

Comments

[lnbw.livejournal.com]

Not true in this country! Except inasmuch as RP has prestige here. (I'm in the US, as I think you know...)

[pne.livejournal.com]

I think TRAP/BATH splitters are in a very small minority in the US, aren't they? (Mostly in New England, maybe in New York?)

But yes, I think I meant "within British-Isles English" or something like that.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Oh, and sometimes I think it'd be neat to have the NORTH/FORCE split, something whose existence I only heard of when I was in my late teens. ("What, there are people who pronounce 'horse' and 'hoarse' differently?")

And then there's wet/whet (not sure whether there's a standard name for that) -- that's a difference that's not native for me but that I'm vaguely trying to pass on to Amy through conscious pronunciation because I think it's a neat distinction. (Other pairs include witch/which, wail/whale, wile/while.) At least here the spelling gives you a hint as to which sound splitters would use.

[(Anonymous)]

I think TRAP/BATH splitters are in a very small minority in the US, aren't they? (Mostly in New England, maybe in New York?)

Yes, definitely... But I have to admit I'm not entirely sure where they are. I would guess New England or midwest.

Oh, and sometimes I think it'd be neat to have the NORTH/FORCE split, something whose existence I only heard of when I was in my late teens. ("What, there are people who pronounce 'horse' and 'hoarse' differently?")

I didn't know about that until just now! What's the phonetic difference?

And then there's wet/whet (not sure whether there's a standard name for that)

I'm not sure either, but I've known people who have this split. It has a bit of a stigma for me; I associate it with the midlands "warsh," but I don't know if that's correct or just a matter of chronology (i.e. being exposed to both around the same time).

-lnbw at work

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Actually, NORTH/FORCE isn't a split but a merger. The traditional dialect of my hometown (St. Louis) preserved this distinction but then carried out something called the card-cord merger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_vowel_changes_before_historic_r#Card-cord_merger). Local landmarks are "Highway Farty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_40)" and "Farrest Park (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Park_%28St._Louis%29)".

NORTH/FORCE: split or merger?

[pne.livejournal.com]

Ah yes; careless vocabulary in my part. Perhaps "NORTH/FORCE differentiation" might have been more neutral. (It's a split from the point of view of my 'lect, but not, of course, from a historical point of view.)

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, definitely... But I have to admit I'm not entirely sure where they are. I would guess New England or midwest.

Certainly not the Midwest, but it might exist a little in the South.

NORTH vs FORCE

[pne.livejournal.com]

I didn't know about that until just now! What's the phonetic difference?

As I understand it, the first component for one class of words is LOT and for the other class, GOAT... so horse/horse would be something like "ho(t) + -rse" vs. "hoe + -rse", or the other way around. Or "the other one" might be pronounced like "sowers" (people who sow seeds), only run together and with a /s/ at the end rather than /z/.

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

I find it strange how rarely you hear such standard accents in songs. I virtually never hear "can't", "dance" etc. in their British standard pronunciation there. I wonder if speakers of standard British English don't become singers, if my impression is simply wrong or if people intentionally try to sound more American.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I've long wondered about this myself. One of these days, I'll get around to reading Peter Trudgill's "Acts of conflicting identity: The socio-linguistics of British pop-song pronunciation" and find out what a real expert has to say about the matter.