Talk:Open-mid back unrounded vowel

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[edit] Various English realization of [ʌ]

The caveat for English phonetic transcription really only applies to English English, as GA really does use the open-mid back unrounded vowel (though specific American dialects use everything in the range [ɐ~ɜ~ʌ~ɔ]). Dave 06:48, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

What's your source for this? Ladefoged working on Southern Californian English for the IPA handbook has [ɐ], and Southern Californian is basically GA. The vowel is different from Vietnamese [ʌ]. kwami 09:43, 2005 September 8 (UTC)
I have not read Ladefoged, but it is not unreasonable that some of the Northern California Vowel Shift (or influence from Spanish?) could be lowering/fronting the /ʌ/ phoneme. Either way, however, neither the speech of Northern or Southern California is representative of what anyone would call "General American". I've been exposed to speakers from every geographic region of the U.S., and I can indeed tell you that for everyone east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason-Dixon Line - including myself - /ʌ/ is definitely a back vowel.
As for comparing these values to Vietnamese, it seems nobody can even agree on what the phonetic values are. So that's not the best point for comparison. For contrast, though, I'd say that I notice when people front /ʌ/ from where I (as a reasonably-GA speaker) am used to hearning it. The worst culprits are the Aussies and American Southerners (who also lengthen it, like they do to all other short vowels). I'm also increasingly hearing it on the BBC. So take that for whatever it's worth.
Dave 05:00, September 12, 2005 (UTC)
Well, that is definitely not what dialectologists and sociolinguists note for North America. Most North American realizations are central. – ishwar  (speak) 21:16, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Is Thomas (2001) the source for [ɜ] as the realization in Ohio and Texas English? — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 00:01, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, he specifically mentions speakers from Johnston, Ohio as consistently having [ɜ] (because he has lots of data from that town, it seems that's where his mother's from). And he says "most" of the Texas speakers in his data have this vowel. – ishwar  (speak) 04:23, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reverting recent edits...

Since we were discussing the very thing that was subsequently changed (without comment on this page), I don't think the anonymous edits were reasonable.