Delete comment from: John Wells’s phonetic blog
@ Mollymooly,
I've heard Irish people like you who have a vowel in father distinct from both PALM and THOUGHHT. In their case, it seems to simply be a lengthened version of LOT, namely [A:]. I couldn't quite make out from your description if this is the case in your accent too. When you were referring to Hickey's approach being rather cavalier, what specifically were you referring to? Thanks for the link.
@ Amy Stoller
"In any case, PALM doesn't work in Ireland any better than FATHER does." I think you meant, "In any case, PALM doesn't work for the whole English-speaking world any better than FATHER does," because clearly it does work better for Ireland. I think your suggestion of "SPA" seems to be the best possibility, or at least the least worst one that can be thought of.
I think for at least some Americans STRUT lowers towards some kind of centralized cardinal 5 at times. The result is that the difference between LOT and STRUT can be more of quantity than quality, given that STRUT tends to be shortish and LOT-PALM longish. Given that in Polish only quality (and nasalization) is used to differentiate vowels, this could easily lead to difficulties hearing such a distinction in English.
Feb 1, 2010, 1:15:30 PM
Posted to lexical sets