Eric Armstrong and Phil Thompson whistle a happy tune: this week, we’re exploring the vowel sound found at the end of words like "happy."

Show Notes:

• for some this is perceived as being an /i/ sound, for others an /ɪ/ sound, and for many (especially around where I live) a sound that is neither of those. What's going on here?

• FORMATION: Weak Close-ish Front-ish Unrounded Vowel

• SPELLING: Group A "y" (itchy, angry, silly etc.), "ie" (sortie, boogie, movie), "i" ( Fettucini, linguine, martini, bikini). Historical (especially in verse) price [əi]; Group B "-ee", "-ey", "-ea" Historical face, [e]

• HISTORY: Group A (sunny, taxi, prairie) was [əi] or [e] (coffee, honey, Chelsea) in Middle English. More recent load words are spelled 'i'.

‣ -y endings and -ie and -ies endings

‣ -ier (happier), -iest (happiest), -ying (hurrying)

‣ prefixes before a vowel re- (react), pre- (preoccupied), de- (deactivate), semi/demi- (demigod)

‣ -iate and -ious when they have 2 syllables (appreciate, hilarious)

‣ weak form "he, she, we, me, be," (and archaic "thee"?)

• Some people argue that it's heard in weak "-ing" (gerund/present participle) endings [we disagree, generally]

• In some dialects, days of the week (e.g. "Monday, Tuesday, etc.), though this is now becoming at best "conservative" speech.

• Piers Messum at UCL coined the term "Schwi" (for happy) and "Schwu" (for inflUence) which, I believe, he's no longer advocating.

• 3 way contrast:

‣ Rosa's, roses, Rosie's

‣ [ɹoʊzəz, ɹoʊzɪz, ɹoʊziz]

(schwa, weak /ɪ/, happY)

• Note that there are weak final /i/ vowels that aren't reduced, e.g. "manatee"

• Distribution: both Checked and Free syllables — apart from schwa, only Free weak vowel in English (which may be why some people use [i] )

• Review: checked? free?

PHONETIC NOTATION: It Depends. Either represented "as it's said" (narrow phonetic transcription, so i & ɪ are used with diacritic marks), or with lower case i without a length mark (a phonemic transcription, like one finds in LPD); sometimes represented with barred-i [ɨ], though that's not canonical. So it doesn't have a cardinal number, really. (If one used barred-i, I suppose you could argue that it's Cardinal 17 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_central_unrounded_vowel )

Quite a lot of variation (in accents): Onglides fairly common [əi] or [əɪ]; more conservative (English and US Southern) accents use /ɪ/ , parts of Scotland use [e], Nottingham goes all the way to [ɛ] though this appears to be changing toward [i]. When this change towards [i] occurs, linguists say that the phoneme is getting more "tense" , so it's a case of “happy-tensing”.

• Happy-Tensing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_high_front_vowels#Happy_tensing

Queen's speech is undergoing happy tensing, though a study of her Xmas broadcasts (1957 » 2009) shows that her kit vowel has changed more significantly than her happy vowel, though most people don't seem to notice the difference in her kit sound!