Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong work their way across the Pulmonic Consonant Chart, focusing in on the Fricative row. Though they do cover English fricatives [θ ð f v s z ʃ ʒ], they go into much greater depth on the non-English sounds [ɸ β ʂ ʐ ç ʝ x ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ h ɦ ]. (note that they follow the IPA chart on the wikipedia page, which sort of blends the very back fricatives with the approximants.)

Today, Phil and Eric finish off our four part trifecta on R, with a deep discussion of linking r, instrusive r, triphthongs and other R-ful tidbits to delight and enthral you.

In this Episode, Phil and Eric talk about the consonant sounds known as Affricates. The sounds, which begin with a stop and release into a fricative, are important in English, as there are two affricates we use on a regular basis: /tʃ/ and /dʒ/.

Phil and Eric also discuss non-English affricates, the difference between an affricate and a stop-affricate pair (as in the difference between ratchet and rat-shit, which exemplify both).

In this episode, Phil and Eric start to unpack the overstuffed suitcase known as rhotic vowels, or r-colored vowels. They cover things like what a rhotic vowel is, the possible use of syllabic consonant R [ɹ̩] rather than using vowel r’s, the difference between rhotic-schwa (aka “schwar,” “r-colored schwa,” or even “flying-schwa”) and rhotic-turned-epsilon (aka “rhotic-3” or “flying-3”). That’s ɚ or ɝ. There is also discussion of the possibility of other rhotic vowels, such as ɑ˞ or ɔ˞. Phil and Eric leave plenty of room for further discussion on future episodes on R-vowels!

After our overview episode last week, Phil and Eric look in greater detail at the full range of R consonant variation. We follow the Rhotic Consonants page on wikipedia as a means of tracking the various possible articulations. You can follow along, too!

We cover:

• Trills

• Alveolar [r]

• Uvular [ʀ]

• Retroflex [ɽ]

• Taps and flaps

• Alveolar tap [ɾ]

• Alveolar lateral flap [ɺ]

• Retroflex flap [ɽ]

• Labiodental flap (perceived as non-rhotic) [ⱱ]

• Alveolar approximant [ɹ]

• Molar approximant (aka “braced” /r/) -- see John Wells’s phonetic blog on the VASTA discussion and Erik Singer’s “anchor” []

• Retroflex approximant [ɻ]

• Uvular fricative [ʁ]

We’ve been moaning about this one, and now we have to face it: we’re tackling the category of sounds that have an R quality, and this episode gets Phil and Eric talking about vowel and consonant R, similarities to semi-vowels, trills, taps, fricatives, approximants, and even the lowered third formant associated with the acoustic qualities of R-ish-ness. We talk about the history of the letter shape, rhotic and non-rhotic accents, and much more.

We’ve also added a Facebook group! Won’t you come join us there? And, as always, you can contact us via our email address: [email protected]

We’re going to get your goat with this episode: Phil and Eric tackle the lexical set goat, that mirrors the set in last episode, face. They discuss the sound of the diphthong and monophthong versions and the history of both the phone and even the letter shape.

Phil and Eric face the music on this one: they tackle the ticklishly intriguing face lexical set, and discuss diphthongs, monophthongs and other phthings, er, things related to the set! And Eric manages to avoid making his lame joke about dip-thongs (something about small European bathing suits...)

In the course of things, they discuss the chart on wikipedia that lays out the sound changes of the Great Vowel Change. Follow along with the chart while listening!

They also discuss the breve (which wikipedia says is pronounced [bɹiv] though we say [bɹɛv] through the whole episode) and the nonsyllabic diacritics, which look like this respectively (though I can’t seem to get them to line up with the small cap i symbol...):

eɪ̆ and eɪ̯

Dark and Light (or is it “clear”?) /l/ forms the core of this episode, where Phil and Eric tackle all the elements of the “el” sounds in English and the world’s languages.

In our silver anniversary episode, Phil and Eric talk about the lexical set dress, and all the various vowels that are associated with it. That includes [e] or is it [ɛ]? The guys try to uncover the history behind the choice to use [e], and advocate pretty hard for their preference, [ɛ].

Show Notes:

We referred to these as we chatted, but wandered all over the place, so we probably don’t get to most of them...

DRESS

Open-mid front unrounded vowel

Notice that it isn’t mid. We don’t have a symbol there at mid.

It’s front , though we can feel how much more front /i/ is. The chart reflects this

It’s unrounded, but that doesn’t necessarily mean spread.

It’s a short vowel

It’s a checked vowel

Cardinal vowel #3 – Daniel Jones /ɛ/

Cardinal vowel #2 – Daniel Jones /e/

“Cardinal vowels (2), (3), and (4) are defined as front vowels that form a series of auditorily equidistant steps between cardinal vowels (1) and (5)” -Ladefoged

Jones also makes a tense/lax distinction

In The Pronunciation of English:

We distinguish two intermediate positions, half-closed and half-open, in which the tongue is lowered from the closed position to about one-third, and two-thirds, of the total distance from the closed position to the open position Examples of …, halfclosed, half-open, … vowels are

e (pen, pen), ɛ (pair, pɛə),

e: the half-closed front tense unrounded vowel

ɛ: a lengthened ɛ

e Half-closed front lax unrounded. Examples: pen, pen, head, hed. 
In L this vowel is often replaced by i, e.g. git, indʒin for get (get), endʒin (engine). In many dialects it is replaced by the opener ɛ , thus, pɛn, hɛd.

Besides occurring independently, the sound e occurs in StP as the first element of the diphthong ei, e.g. day, dei. With many speakers, especially in N.Eng. this diphthong is tense, i.e. the two elements are the tense vowels corresponding to the lax e, i. In Sc the diphthong is not generally used, a pure tense vowel (phonetic symbol e:) being substituted (de:). In L the first element of the diphthong ei is much opener than in StP, becoming ɛ, æ, a, or even ɑ, thus dɛi, dæi, dai, dɑi. In L e sometimes occurs instead of ʌ 

Note the faulty pronunciation of aerate (StP eiəreit or eəreit) as ɛəreit or iəreit. The words again, always are often pronounced agen, ɔ:lwiz, ɔ:lwəz, but the forms agein, ɔ:lweiz are preferable.

Half-open front unrounded. This sound only occurs in StP in the diphthong ɛə. Examples there, their, ðɛə. See also the previous section. In the pronunciation of many S.Eng. speakers, the first element of this diphthong is more open than ɛ, being in fact practically æ (ðæə). The form ɛə is preferable. In L the first element of this diphthong is the half-closed tense vowel e: (ðeə)

“The standard lexical set DRESS is defined as comprising those words whose citation form in RP has the stressed vowel /e/ and in GenAm /ɛ/” -Wells

step, bet, neck, fetch, Jeff, mess, mesh, ebb, bed, egg, edge, rev, fez, hem, pen, bell, shelf, hemp, tent, theft, best, sex, next, effort, method, terror, tenor, jelly, centre/center, pester, threat, sweat, deaf, death, bread, dead, head, health, realm, meant, breast, ready, jealous, pleasant, weather, treacherous