Re: Character Identity and Font Selection

On Sat, 11 Jun 2011 14:03:48 -0700
Stephan Stiller <sstiller_at_stanford.edu> wrote:

> Why do many British transcriptions use
> vowel length indications, while American ones rarely do? (And if the
> British do, they don't normally apply it to [æ] - why?)

Vowel length matters more to Britons - perhaps because non-rhotic
accents have a wider range of vowels.

As to [æ], some accents contrast [æ] and [æː] - see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_short_A#Bad-lad_split .
 I would also be inclined to represent the monophthongisation of
 <fire> /faɪə/ as [fæː] - it's subtly different from [fɑː] <far> and
 [pɑː] <power>.

Richard.
Received on Sun Jun 12 2011 - 04:53:41 CDT