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[wwidsith]

I Facebooked Vicky Coren about her article last week, and she wrote me the nicest, sweetest, friendliest message back. The inter-highway is just great sometimes!

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I think I've decided to turn down the French job. I can't afford to relocate on the salary they're offering me and expect to see anything of Hannah. There are other

Comments

[hobnobofjoy]

I'm glad you've made a decision, although I'm kind of sad you decided not to go. It would have been so cool... But hey, there's plenty of time yet!

I'm looking at OE phonology at the moment and have Sweet, Campbell, and Mitchell and Robinson out. What was the /a/ phoneme you weren't sure about?

[wwidsith]

The way I learnt it, the letter A is pronounced [ɑ]. But a lot of people seem to pronounce it [a]. What do they all say?

[hobnobofjoy]

It depends on phonemic context - I will paraphrase Sweet because he gives the shortest explanation:

short a (as in OE mana) is pronounced as in German 'mann'
long a (as in OE stan) is pronounced as in ModE 'father'.

That covers both sounds. I think.

(Embarrassingly I had to refresh my IPA knowledge too there - you do keep me on my toes)

[wwidsith]

I'm surprised by that. Obviously stan is long, but I would pronounce a short-A as a shorter version of the same sound. How up-to-date is Sweet?

Also, Wikipedia (I know they're not exactly 100% reliable) seems to agree with me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_phonology

[hobnobofjoy]

Haha, well, Sweet is 1882. If I could be bothered to grapple with Campbell while I'm still in my pyjamas I'd tell you what he thinks.

As far as I can tell I've always followed Sweet's pronunciations. The shorter A is more fronted, but now that I think of it, German 'mann' isn't, really. It's between /munn/ and /monn/. I've just talked myself in a circle.