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/gəˈhɔʊrɪ/ (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago by lars@lemmy.sdf.org to c/linguistics_humor@sh.itjust.works

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16743680

ghoti rule

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[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I thought that might be the case too, and actually had half drafted a paragraph explaining that. But then I actually took a second look and no, I stress the first syllable of "ghoti". I do stress the second syllable of "goatee", which has all the same phonemes (well, unless the fact that ghoti has [i] but goatee has [i:] matters), but a different stress for me.

I don't really know what the flapping "rules" are for my dialect. I flap in famous examples like "butter", but for whatever reason not here.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I was looking for further info, and found something interesting:

Flapping and glottal reinforcement of alveolar stops [in Australian English] occur variably according to stylistic requirements or speaker-specific idiosyncratic patterns and are not usually obligatory (Ingram 1989).

It seems that the "rules" in this case are pretty much individual, not even dialectal. And to add confusion to the mix, it seems that your dialect allows both flapping and glottalisation, and they're competing with each other.

That backtracks to what you mentioned about the vowel quality - perhaps [i] (and potentially other vowels) block flapping for you.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 points 4 months ago

Is glottalisation where [t] is replaced by a glottal stop, like is common in Cockney? Australian English is much less varied than American or British, but still varied enough that I can believe that, even though as far as I'm aware it doesn't feature in my accent.

perhaps [i] (and potentially other vowels) block flapping for you.

Yeah I suspect that's probably it. I recall seeing a list of vowels where it's done in Australian English, and I think [ɪ] was on it, but not [i].