Question about pronunciation

Perhaps it'd be a good idea to know what the thread is about before you start posting, especially in that manner.
Since we don't earn minerals yet, I'll just excess quote the bits that make the topic obvious:

Also, the reason I keep referring to phonetics is that, knowing the signs, it is clear that the two ways of pronouncing 'was' (along with the 'to'~'two' distiction - disregard their different spelling and only take their pronunciation and how it changes in those sentences) is in fact encoded, it's not just a matter of stress/intonation, it's a matter of totally different sounds. Just listen to the link a few times.

ps sorry, I misunderstood the correction then... it wasn't hard at all since this is probably the first time I've seen you correct someone's mistake, which is why I thought you were making a fuss about it.

 

I think the answer is actually both
I have this one dictionary here which says that both to and two are pronounced /tu:/

 

In answer to 'is two pronounced the same way as to?', yes, which is what I've been saying from the start, but the 'two' in that example sentence, is probably pronounced slightly differently to 'to' in the other example sentence, which is due to stress. In the other two quotes, you've just put your opinion in bold, which I've responded to.

About the phonetics again, that may not apply to Australian English, which I tend to refer to, what with being Australian and all. If you're preferably wanting U.K. English speakers, perhaps the pronunciation of them may be different there. Without meaning to stereotype, U.K. English is a bit more formal than Australian English, despite their close similarities. Australian English tends to be more slurred or, as I've heard, casual while others, particularly American English, tends to be more hard or strict, which may lead to 'to', 'too' and 'two' all being pronounced the same way in Australian English.

Don't worry about the misunderstanding, could have happened to anyone. Generally I only correct people when there's a repeated mistake or if they are unsure, because otherwise it's usually just typo's or internet slang, etc. Anyway, yeah. No hard feelings.

 

I'm really glad this thread turned around. It was going down the path to ****.

@Kuvasz
I looked up the preposition-at-the-end-of-a-sentence thing and found out that technically, we are both right. Not ending a sentence with a preposition is technically incorrect, but since it complicates things so much, it's only enforced in some situations. The site I checked said:
"if you want to keep the crusty old-timers happy, try to avoid ending written sentences (and clauses) with prepositions"
So that's me. A crusty old-timer. :-D

@ Itza
A few posts ago you said that the pronunciation things didn't mean anything to you or presumably anyone else here. It does mean something to me. To be honest, I like it a lot better than your excessively-long posts.

@ both
After reading 1 page of new posts I seriously couldn't remember who was arguing for what. I understand wanting to express yourself, but after a certain point, more words =/= better argument.

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Now. Something to keep in mind FOR EVERYONE when you get into this sort of debate:
Is the degeneration of a thread REALLY worth you being right?

 

@ Nikzad. I never said that it didn't mean anything to anyone else here, I said 'presumably most other members'. That does not mean absolutely everyone, it means that I'm making the assumption that it wouldn't mean anything to most members, seeing as most people are not fluent in phonetics. If you prefer them to my long posts then sorry, but tough. To me, and others who may not understand it, using them is like proving some maths problem in binary or answering a question in Swahili. It's basically just another way of saying ''fraid not' or ''fraid so'.

More words may not necessarily correspond to a better argument, but it certainly doesn't correspond to a worse one. Arguments can't always be summarised, especially when trying to prove a point or when you've got a lot to respond to in the first place.

 

I pronounce two longer than to
For example:

I want two of those.
I want to go home.

If talking at normal speed, I would pronounce two in a bit longer time than I would pronounce to.

 

who the **** said no

two (tū)
too (tū)
to (tū)

That's each word and the pronunciation from the dictionary. As you can see, each one has the same pronunciation.

 

Too bad dictionaries don't consider pronunciation changes between words and in regular speech (e.g., I saw a girl will have an intruding R between w and a). Long story short, your examples are useless, but thanks for posting.

 

My dictionary confirms they're pronounced the same as well. Who's to say that dictionaries don't consider that pronunciation changes between words and speech? They obviously do, otherwise they'd just rewrite the same word for the pronunciation. If you look up 'saw' it doesn't just say 'saw' for the pronunciation, it says /sɔ/, just as 'paw' says /pɔ/ and 'ore' says /ɔ/. Evidently, dictionaries do factor in changes between words and regular speech, so those examples are perfectly useful.

 

Yay, you used IPA

I don't think you understood what I meant. You'll never find saw transcribed as /sɔ:r/ yet that's what you say when a vowel follows it, like in I saw a girl (intruding R). Similarly, you'll never find boar transcribed as /bɔ:r/ yet that's what you say in I scared the boar away (linking R).
This is all in British English, of course.

As you can see, pronunciation changes depending on what sorrounds the word, on how sentence level intonation and stress changes, etc. Dictionaries do not consider these aspects.

 

do ore and or actually sound the same?

 

I fixed my previous post to reflect what you said

It was more in defense of kuvasz rather than an attack on you

And also, the part about the long posts was directed at both of you guys, even if you do take the cake when it comes to that Itza

 

Yeah, it took me forever to find the 'ɔ' symbol. Almost wasn't worth it...

Stresses like that, which are dependant on where the word is in the sentence, are the stresses that are applied to the standard pronunciation of a word, in this case being /sɔ/. It's not that 'saw', 'to' or any word can be pronounced in thousands of different ways, all those ways are dependant on the sentence and alter the words standard pronunciation. No matter whether it's followed by a noun, at the end of a question, etc, etc, stresses are applied to the standard pronunciation, which is why they may sound different when put into a sentence. For example, in the following three sentences both 'to', 'too' and 'two' are pronounced differently, but its only because of where its placed in the sentence, despite all of them having the same standard pronunciation; 'there are two of them?!', 'are you going to go too?' and 'I went to the shops'. With 'two' the 't' is hit harder and the 'oo' sound is longer, with 'too' the 'oo' sound is longer and is spoken with an upwards inflection, and with 'to' it's pronounced more or less the same as its standard pronunciation.

Also, with 'I saw a girl', the extra 'r' sound is applied to the beginning of the 'a' as opposed ot the end of the 'saw'. That's probably just the difference between Australian English and U.K. English coming out again though.

EDIT: @ ijffdrie. Yes, they are. I hope we can all agree on that at least.

@ Nikzad. Regardless of who it was directed at, my point still stands. The length of the post has nothing to do with the quality of the argument. Short posts can be really good or really pointless and the same goes for long posts. Some people might be lucky enough to be able to sum up exactly what they have to say in a paragraph or so, but that may not be possible for some points, especially over forums.

 

I didn't say that your point didn't still stand, I just tried to diffuse the situation and not make it seem like I was only directing my criticism at you. You don't have to lecture me in the merits of shorter or longer posts and their correlation to argument quality, I've taken multiple classes in rhetoric.

 

I see what you mean now. But there are actually independent pronunciations of words, not just alternations of the original (or individual) pronunciation. And it's nowhere near the thousands, there are about 2 or 3 ways. I think the reason you think there are lots of ways to pronounce words is because you don't know how limited the IPA chart is, which was designed to cover all variations. You might have used wikipedia to copy your IPA symbol, but if not, here's a link to it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_chart_for_English

And let us not forget that we've been using broad transcription throughout this thread. Narrow transcription would probably demonstrate the pronunciation differences much better.

As for the r, it is associated with saw, not a. The reason for this is because linking r comes from the spelling of the word (that r is of course not pronounced when the word stands on its own or is followed by a consonant), and so intruding r is made to act similarly in that regard (i.e., attach to the end of the word instead of to the front of the following).

@ Nik: I don't really care how long a post is as long as it makes sense I prefer longer posts to keep my postcount low.

@ ijff: Yes.

 

I agree, it was just that, like I said, after reading your guys' posts it got to the point where I was confused as to who was saying what. But it's a moot point. w/e

 

I never said you said that my point didn't still stand. I was just clarifying. Also, whatever it was that you tried to diffuse had already diffused. You said so yourself, not to mention that the majority of each post was on topic, so there was nothing to diffuse in that regard.

If you already understand that there's no correlation between the length of posts and their quality, why did you say:

That's all I was really responding to. My posts didn't go on for so long that it degraded my argument, and there's the fact that each paragraph is for a different point so each point isn't actually that long either.

EDIT: @ kuvasz. Cheers for the chart. It'll come in handy for the future.

I never really mean that there are literally thousands of different ways to pronounce them, but there are definitely more than two or three. Being followed by a vowel or being at the end of a sentence are two fairly general examples of how the pronunciation can be changed, and there are lots of others, all depending on the context. There aren't thousands, but there are definitely more than two or three.

About the 'r' sound in 'I saw a girl', it's not that I pronounced the 'a' as 'ra', it's just that the 'r' sound carries on from the 'saw' to the 'a'. It's all in the flow of the speech and as I said earlier, it's probably just an Australian thing.

 

I'm trying to gracefully bow out of this misunderstanding and leave you guys to your debate, but you're not letting me Itza. I'm done discussing this, it's irrelevant and derailing the thread, so drop it.

 

Why would it be an Aussie thing? I brought up the example from BrE
Also, the chart says both AuE and BrE say /-ə(ɹ)/ ((ɹ) being the sign of linking r).

As for the 2 or 3 ways of pronouncing words, I say that because of the IPA limitations. There is a finite list of signs and the IPA is supposed to cover all the ways of pronouncing things, so it's only natural that pronunciations corresponding to signs is rather flexible.

Here is an example of what I'm saying with the case of two and to:
/aɪ wɒnt tʊ gəʊ/ - I want to go transcribed word for word
/aɪ wɒn tə gəʊ/ - I want to go transcribed as you would perceive it in speech
Pronunciation changed quite radically, and stress is not even taken into account here.

Try pronouncing the words two and to in the following ways and see if either of them sound very wrong (consider these in the flow of speech as well).
/tʊ/
/tə/
/tu/
/tu:/
I think they all sound right. Applying these to the original two sentences, I would transcribe them like so:
Jack would like two. - /,dʒæk wʊd laɪk 'tu:/
Jack would like to. - /dʒæk wʊd 'laɪk tu/ or /dʒæk wʊd 'laɪk tə/
I marked:
Sentence level stress with '
In a rising tone sentence, the lowest tone with ,, which gradually peaks at '

 

here in America we generally don't add more sounds to words just because the next word starts with a vowel.

I sawr a... thats the dumbest thing i've ever seen.
It's always saw. Never anything else just sô.

And while I bet you have lots of fun with your pronunciation charts they just don't take into account the dozens of different accents which will completely change the pronunciation. Long story short, your examples are useless, but thanks for posting.