Episode 13: foot

Goodness! It's our lucky thirteenth episode, and Phil and Eric tackle the /ʊ/ vowel and the lexical set foot. We talk about symbols used to represent it in phonetic notation, spellings of the sound, the history of the sound, splits and mergers in various accents of English, and interesting "goodies" about the sound represented by upsilon . Show Notes: Description “short oo” near-close near-back rounded vowel Formation Do it like this: [slide between /u/ and schwa?] Handbook of the IPA defines this as a 'mid-centralization of /u/'. Phonetic Symbol Turned omega ʊ [wiki: "horseshoe u"] closed omega ɷ was voted off the island in1989 called “In Americanist phonetic notation, the symbol [ᴜ] (a small capital U) is used” --- -Wikipedia After Jones: /u/ /u:/ Phil feel that this confuses quality and quantity but it has continued as the practice in the UK for a long time [Therefore: /ʊ/ is not a Cardinal Vowel] • Vowel Reduction of /u/, especially /ju/ as in stimulus vs. stimulate Occurrence (from Wikipedia) In the following transcriptions, an unrounded vowel is represented by the "less-rounded" diacritic [ʊ̜]: Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Arabic كتب [ˈkʊtʊb] 'books' See Arabic phonology Chinese Cantonese 紅 [hʊ̜ŋ] 'red' See Cantonese phonology Mandarin 紅 [xʊ̜ŋ˧˥] 'red' May be only slightly rounded. See Mandarin phonology English hook [hʊk] 'hook' May be only slightly rounded. See English phonology Faroese hvalur [kvɛalʊɹ] 'whale' French Quebec foule [fʊl] 'crowd' See French phonology German Schutz [ʃʊts] 'protection' See German phonology Mongolian[1] өлгий [ʊɮɣiː] 'cradle' Portuguese European[2] pegar [pʊ̜ˈɡaɾ] 'to hold' Unstressed vowel. See Portuguese phonology Brazilian[3] saco [ˈsakʊ] 'bag' Russian[4] сухой [sʊˈxo̞j] 'dry' Unstressed allophone of /u/. See Russian phonology Swedish ort [ʊʈ] (help·info) '(geographic) place' Exolabial (compressed). See Swedish phonology Vietnamese thu [tʰʊw] 'autumn' See Vietnamese phonology History of English Spelling and Development of pronunciation foot O.E. fot c.1300 put O.E. putung c.1300 puss O.E. 1530 bush O.E. bysc full O.E. full pudding O.E. puduc c.1300 bull O.E. bula good O.E. god stood O.E. stod c.1300 wood O.E. wudu hood O.E. hod hook O.E. hoc hoof O.E. hof cook O.E. coc nook noke c.1300 rook O.E. hroc (crow) look O.E. locian wool O.E. wull wolf O.E. wulf roof O.E. hrof soot O.E. sot bosom O.E. bosm could O.E. cuðe pt. of cunnan should O.E. sceolde c.1200 would O.E. wolde shook O.E. sceacan (scoc) push O.Fr. poulser c.1300 cuckoo O.Fr. cucu c.1240 butcher O.Fr boucher c.1300 cushion O.Fr. coissin c.1300 rook O.Fr. roc c.1300 (chess piece) sugar O.Fr. sucre c.1289 bullet M.Fr. boulette 1550s woman late O.E wifman root late O.E. rot jook Gullah joog 1937 (wicked, disorderly) took late O.E. toc Buddha Pali budh 1680s related to Skt. bodhati Muslim Arabic muslim 1615 Jack Windsor Lewis: •This is usually spelt u or oo but corresponds to the spelling o only in bosom, wolf, woman and worsted. Cf courier / `kʊriə/ and the place name Worcester. The suffix -ful has this vowel in nouns eg boxful, mouthful, spoonful but not in adjectives eg useful, beautiful, hopeful which instead have either /ə/ or more usually no vowel. • Elisions due to speeded articulation from increased familiarity: actually/-ʧʊəli→-ʧəli/ , manufacture /-njʊf→nəf-/ , particularly /-kjʊləli→/-kjəli//, usually /`juːʒʊəli→/`juːʒli/ • The beginning of /ʊɚ/ & the end of /aʊ/ /oʊ/ diphthongs Mergers and Splits foot/strut Historic split. Some areas don’t do this split foot/goose Scottish merger (realization may be fronter) foot/nurse Not really a merger, but in many US accents midcentralization and unrounding bring the two closer. “cook” /u/ in Ireland and North England - According to Wells Post vocalic /l/ can “reverse” the foot/strut merger, making “culture” into [kʊlʧɚ] Sultan – vulnerable – culture – culture – multi - Ashton Kutcher: /u/ or /ʊ/? Some plurals reverse the vowel shift, moving from /ʊ/ to /u/ hoof/hooves roof/rooves? “jukebox “This is a newishword which reversed the shift/ʊ/ to /u/ oops whoops zhoozh