... for a poem I'm writing.

In American English can doggerel rhyme with inaugural?

In American English can doggerel rhyme with inaugural?

They do in my Leftcoast accent.

in-AUG-yoo(or, ya)-uhl
DOG-er-uhl

not heah

They approximately do with my midwest accent...though there is a little "yoo" in my inaugural that's not in my doggeral.

What about the English accent, Bob?

No. Not in English. Standard American, as shown in that handy rhyming dictionary you gave me has undergone a vowel merge not present in standard British English.

To give an example the dictionary says that all these words rhyme.

odd, awed, gaud, God, hod, jawed, cod, cawed, laud, clod, plod, gnawed, and many others.

In British English these form two separate groups.

odd, God, hod, cod, clod, plod
and
awed, gaud, jawed, cawed, laud, gnawed

The vowel sound in the second group is longer than that in the first group. Without actually being in the room with you I can't demonstrate the difference.

-------

However, that same dictionary does show "dogger" as rhyming with "augur" though it doesn't show "doggerel" as rhyming with "inaugural".

If they don't rhyme I will rise to the challenge in some other way. Pity, though, I had a poem with a killer last line.

quote:

Originally posted by BobHale:
Without actually being in the room with you I can't demonstrate the difference.

There’s a nifty pronunciation site that came up on OEDILF where you can demonstrate that difference, Bob.

Click for awed and odd

As far as the poem goes, Dict.com supports a 3 syl “DAW-ger-uhl” rhyming with “in-AW-ger-uhl”

Dictionary.com:-
doggerel [daw-ger-uh l, dog-er-], [daw-gruh l, dog-ruh l]
inaugural [in-aw-gyer-uh l, -ger-uh l]

Thanks stella.
The poem can now be found here

After talking to Shu about these pronunciations at dinner tonight, I've changed my mind. Inaugural and doggeral rhyme for me (and Shu as well). I was influenced by proof's post.

According to the OED, in British English "doggerel" has the vowel /ɒ/ and "inaugural" has the vowel /ɔ/. According to Merriam-Webster, these words have different vowels in American English too, but I don't know what vowels they are because M-W doesn't use the IPA. But I assume they are /ɑ/ and /ɔ/.

To someone with the cot-caught merger, like me, both words have the same vowel /ɑ/.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

quote:

Originally posted by BobHale:
The vowel sound in the second group is longer than that in the first group. Without actually being in the room with you I can't demonstrate the difference.

Learn the IPA and then you can

I know IPA but for me to demonstrate it using that everyone I'm trying to demonstrate it to has to know it too. And for anyone to learn IPA they really need someone who already knows it to be present to demonstrate the sound-symbol correspondences.

They don't rhyme to me, but I speak in an unusual manner for a US of American.

Inaugural and doggerel rhyme for me, Bob, and I would say that your two groups of rhyming words are divided correctly for my ear as well.

Wordmatic

To someone with the cot-caught merger, like me, both words have the same vowel /ɑ/.

I still distinguish between /ɑ/ and /ɔ/, as in shock /'ʃɑk/ and awe /'ʔɔ/. After careful consider (i.e., trying to fool myself into pronouncing inaugural in casual and careful registers, I have determined, I have determined that I pronounce the two words to rhyme (/ʔɪ'nᴐgrəl/ and /'dᴐgrəl/) in the former situation, but there is a tiny bit of glide in the careful speech (/ʔɪ'nᴐgjərəl/) to bring it into line with how other folks in the States pronounce it. If I were to pronounce doggerel /'dɑgrəl/, to my ear, it would sound like I was trying to put on a Boston accent. For me, a dog is a dog /'dᴐg/, and that it what the first syllable of doggerel rhymes with.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

quote:

Originally posted by BobHale:
I know IPA

There's no harm in using it! Some of us know it and those who don't might be encouraged to learn it.

They rhyme to me.

The part about IPA that confuses me is exemplified by this post in the Cabanga thread:

quote:

The letter C in Zulu is a dental click consonant - same as the sound we make to express disaproval that's spelled "tsk". The b is implosive and the ng is like the ng in "singer", not "finger".

In IPA: [ǀaˈɓa:ŋa]

Those "dental clicks" are hard interpret when just reading about them. I think IPA is one of those subjects that's best taught in person.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Those "dental clicks" are hard interpret when just reading about them. I think IPA is one of those subjects that's best taught in person.

You can hear some Zulu clicks here.

The click in the top left corner, the voiceless unaspirated velar plosive, is the click in the word "cabanga". It sounds exactly like the sound of disapproval that's written "tsk".

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

Well, one of those words we must pronounce differently because "tsk" and "cabanga" don't sound a bit alike to me, in any way.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Well, one of those words we must pronounce differently because "tsk" and "cabanga" don't sound a bit alike to me, in any way.

How do you know? Have you heard "cabanga" pronounced by a Zulu speaker?

Look at the page I link to above, and click the top right word, the one for "to whitewash". It begins with the click sound in question. To me the click sounds exactly like the sound we spell "tsk".

You can also hear the same sound in Xhosa: "to grind fine"

Nama: "put into"

Kalleh, what goofy is saying is that a Zulu pronounces words with a c (in their spelling system) in them as the same sound we make when we say tsk. The b in Zulu is not pronounced like an English b.

Also, I looked in an online Zulu dictionary and cabanga 'imagine, recall' in the simple form without affixes or other changes is an imperative. goofy's transliteration is the one which the dictionary uses which means that the Zulu pronunciation of cabanga is nothing like how we would pronounce a word as though it was written using English orthography: at least two of the sounds, the c and the b would be wrong..

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

All of which just reinforces my contention that the ONLY way to learn what an IPA symbol means is to have someone who already knows, show you the symbol AND pronounce it.

Unless you can HEAR it you can't know what sound it represents.

Unless you can HEAR it you can't know what sound it represents.

goofy and I have pointed to sites on the Web that have IPA symbols matched to MP3 files, so you can see and hear them. That coupled with descriptions (in books and online, e.g., Wikipedia articles also oftentimes linked to) should be sufficient for somebody to learn enough IPA to get a fairly good idea how things are pronounced.

I've tracked down the story in the media to one Dr David Lewis at the University of Sussex. He has a lab there called The Mind Lab that does research in Neuromarketing. From videos attached to some of the online articles, I have determined that they are not giving this Zulu word its native pronunciation, but pronouncing it as though it were an English word. I've sent them an email and will relay any responses.

quote:

Originally posted by BobHale:
All of which just reinforces my contention that the ONLY way to learn what an IPA symbol means is to have someone who already knows, show you the symbol AND pronounce it.

This is what I'm doing! I've linked to sound files of sounds over and over again.

I know. We are agreeing.
There is of course another problem. Where sounds are not part of your first language it is very difficult to hear and distinguish them without a great deal of practice. For example I have Somali students who have been studying English for five years and are still unable to reliably distinguish /p/ and /b/. These are not separate sounds in Somali. This is why I, and others, have trouble with click sounds which are not part of normal English and why, even though I can make the sounds, I still sometimes confuse an umlauted U with a non-umlauted one when I hear them in German.

This is why I, and others, have trouble with click sounds which are not part of normal English

Except, as goofy and I have pointed out, the dental click of Zulu does exist in English (both UK and US AFAIK). It is the sound that one makes with the tip of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge just behind the teeth, which registers disapproval and is usually represented as tsk. I'd be surprised if you haven't heard it or could not make it. It just isn't used in words as a phoneme in English. It's something else. Likewise the sound for making a horse get going: sometimes rendered as giddyup. That is a lateral click. Of course, English doesn't have nearly the plethora of click consonants that some African languages do have. They are extralinguistic in English whereas they are phonemic in Zulu et al.

As for the hard work, I never said it'd be easy. I still have a tough time distinguishing /p/ and /b/ in Indian languages. Our /p/ in English is usually aspirated. It is difficult to hear the difference between sounds that exist as phonemes in your native language and those that don't, but it is possible. Also, it should be a fairly easy task to learn the IPA symbols for the phonemes that exist in English and some of the phones that occur in the various regional dialects of English. And, that's why I think it would be handy on these words forums to know IPA. The OED uses it in its pronunciation guides. I have found it in most second language learning dictionaries I have in other languages (from Chinese to French).

quote:

How do you know? Have you heard "cabanga" pronounced by a Zulu speaker?

If you recall, I heard about this word on a report from NPR. They were pronouncing it as I would, and I am pretty sure that's how they want to use it.

quote:

It is the sound that one makes with the tip of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge just behind the teeth, which registers disapproval and is usually represented as tsk.

Now I get it. Sometimes I've heard it pronounced as spelled, so that was why I wasn't getting it.

I did listen to all those links of goofy's and didn't hear that "tsk" sound very well. I think I need to train my ear better.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:

quote:

How do you know? Have you heard "cabanga" pronounced by a Zulu speaker?

If you recall, I heard about this word on a report from NPR. They were pronouncing it as I would, and I am pretty sure that's how they want to use it.

Ah, well I didn't know that. In that case, I'm skeptical of how scientific their linguistic analysis was.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

I got a response back from somebody at the Mind Lab. He says "Many thanks for this information, most helpful!" I find that they are not concerned about how it is pronounced in Zulu. personally,

quote:

Ah, well I didn't know that. In that case, I'm skeptical of how scientific their linguistic analysis was.

I wish I could find the NPR report of it (I've spent waaaay too long looking for it), but I think you are right, goofy.

YES.