Talk:SAMPA
I am not 100% sure, but it appears as though many of the English examples, especially the vowels, are more typical of British English than of American English. Could we have some American English examples?
does [ Q ] occur in US English? I'm guessing the following transcipritons for US
- law : [ lA: ]
- dot : [ dA:t ]
- cat: I'm desperately trying out other British English accents which pronounce "cat" differently and drawing a blank. tending towards [ c(I){t ] maybe? would anyone care to enlighten me?
- fun: no idea... [ f3:n ] ?
-- Tarquin, Tuesday, June 18, 2002
- "Law" will vary depending on whether you're transcribing pronounciation from an area where the local dialect merges "cot" and "caught" or not. Here where the merger is common (generally speaking, west of the Mississippi), [lA:] sounds right. I'm not so sure about [dA:t] vs [dAt], but the length doesn't really matter here; it's certainly not [Q] unless I'm sorely misunderstanding what [Q] is. "Fun" is only [fVn] as far as I know, and I'm even more confused by the "London English" "cat" issue.
- Also, you may or may not be interested in the SAMPA-IPA table I've put in the Esperanto version of this article, based on the IPA table I snagged from this German page. --Brion VIBBER
The table would be good as an addition to the current one. Most of the IPA symbols render as "?" on Win98 :( About Q and O... (Musn't get muddled translating from IPA to SAMPA...) My Collins says cot [ kQt ] (upside down round a) and caught [ kO:t ] (upside down c). I'm trying to hear in my head how characters on US TV shows speak... I'm an RP speaker, so [ O ] occurs in "bored", "law", "order". [ Q ] is in "poppy" and words ending in "ology", [ Ql@d3I ]. Unfortunately, I think US pronunciation will be different for all. I'll listen out next time I watch a US tv show and see if I can spot a [ Q ]. For that matter, Dr Corday on ER has an RP accent. Tarquin, Tuesday, June 18, 2002
I am an American, from Connecticut, and I believe that in my area, the sound of "o" in words such as "stop", "fox", etc., is just about the same as the vowel "a" as it is pronounced in Spanish, etc. Here, there is no difference at all between the sound that primary school teachers call "short o" and the sound you make when a doctor tells you to "say ah". -Juuitchan
While I'm at it, vowel length around here (Connecticut) seems to be pretty much irrelevant. I am not sure, but I think in the local speech, there are ten vowel sounds, not counting diphthongs or "r-colorings", in addition to "vocalic r". I will enumerate:
- "a" of "wasp" or "o" of "fox"
- "a" of "cat"
- "i" of "dish"
- "ee" of "feet"
- "u" of "glue" or of "rude"
- "u" of "but"
- "oo" of "foot" or "ou" of "should"
- "a" of "ball" or "aw" of "law" or of "caw"
- "e" of "let" or "ea" of "head"
- "o" of "old" or of "snow"
- Vocalic r: "ir" of "bird" or "er" of "her"
Some things I have noticed among students around here learning Japanese:
- 1. I myself have trouble perceiving vowel length.
- 2. Around here, the pure "o" vowel occurs only in diphthongs, except when followed by a liquid. This caused some students to mispronounce the Japanese "o".