Amyism: strong and weak forms of them (or lack thereof)

[pne]

For Amy, them seems to have no distinct strong form; instead, she has generalised the weak form /ðəm/ (for her, [dəm]) for the strong form as well.

For example, recently we were looking at a car where the windows on our side had frost on them and we couldn’t see inside; she suggested, “Let’s see whether there’s frost on the other windows, otherwise you can look through [ˈdəm]”, with a stressed final them. But her stressed form still had a schwa / neutral vowel in it, which doesn’t really work in English phonology (though it’s perfectly cromulent in some other languages, Albanian being an example that comes to mind). (For me, for example, that word in that position would be [ˈðɛm] with a DRESS vowel.)

Fun stuff.

Comments

[ailbhe]

Lots of English speakers would say "thum" in that sentence.

[pne]

Oh! That surprises me - so thanks for the information.

Learn something new every day.