Truthularity
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Today's SMBC:
The mouseover title: "Also dracular, meaning that it pertains to small vampires."
The aftercomic:
For some background, you could start with Geoff Nunberg's 2002 Fresh Air piece, "Presidents and Pronunciation: Going 'Nucular'":
Linguist Geoff Nunberg talks about presidents and language, and the pronunciation of nuclear as "nucular," a mispronunciation that dates all the way back to the era of Eisenhower. The underlying cognitive causes and social implications are considered.
Then there's Arnold Zwicky's two-part 6/29/2004 LLOG post:
"The thin line between error and variation (Part 1 of 2)"
"The thin line between error and mere variation II: Going Nucular"
And a 2008 exchange between Geoff Nunberg and Steve Pinker:
"Pinker on Palin's 'nucular'", 10/5/2008
"Pinker contra Nunberg re nuclear/nucular", 10/17/2008
Kenny Easwaran said,
December 6, 2021 @ 12:01 pm
It does seem likely that the existence of the suffix "-ule" and form "-ular" is part of what makes people find this pronunciation easier and more familiar, whether or not there's any semantic interaction.
J.W. Brewer said,
December 6, 2021 @ 12:16 pm
Related to Kenny E.'s point, it seems relevant that not only that there are other words that rhyme with "molecular" (not only fairly technical ones like "follicular" but e.g. "secular" and others listed by Arnold Zwicky) but perhaps more importantly there seem to be very few if any that rhyme with the standard pronunciation of "nuclear" other than compounds like "mononuclear" which don't really count. One rhyming dictionary online proposed "bouclier," which (a) is a word I don't recall ever having encountered before; and (b) is a word that I would at a guess pronounce Frenchly (or perhaps pseudo-Frenchly). So it's not quite like the standard pronunciation violates any actual specific rule of English phonotactics one could identify, it just for whatever reason is a phonotactically permissible sequence that is not otherwise in actual use.
J.W. Brewer said,
December 6, 2021 @ 12:18 pm
I hit post too hastily and forgot to add the caveat that for many/most people the standard pronunciation isn't quite completely bisyllabic and thus is not a perfect rhyme for clear/smear/jeer and so on. But it would be interesting to know in practice how many speakers out there use a straight bisyllabic pronunciation that makes it fit that other, more common pattern, as if it were completely homophonous with "new clear."
Cervantes said,
December 6, 2021 @ 12:22 pm
I also think nucular is just easier to say because it doesn't have the vowel glide. It's pretty funny though that Jimmy Carter was in fact a nuclear engineer. But it's true, I can't easily think of a rhyming word. It's not common in English.
Terpomo said,
December 6, 2021 @ 12:49 pm
J. W. Brewer, I can't recall ever hearing "nuclear" with only two syllables, where have you heard that?
Michael Watts said,
December 6, 2021 @ 1:25 pm
This actually surprises me – I recently read some material on cellular biology aloud, and I made an effort to distinguish a 3-syllable reading of "nuclear" [relating to the nucleus of a cell] from the ordinary 2-syllable "nuclear" [of weapons or power plants, technically relating to the nucleus of an atom, but in a way that is opaque to most people]. And even though I specifically wanted to, I couldn't really do it. There's not enough of a barrier between producing /i/ and producing the /ə/ that would follow it.
I'm not surprised by the idea that the standard pronunciation is not completely bisyllabic – with a rhotic coda, that's a difficult call, getting us back to the old question of "how many syllables is 'fire'?". But I am surprised that the end of "nuclear" might not be perfectly homophonous with "clear".
It is the American standard, and the alternative /nukjəlɚ/ is widespread but actively stigmatized, as reflected in the comic.
Terry K. said,
December 6, 2021 @ 1:36 pm
Hm… I'm American and I can't imagine nuclear pronounced with just two syllables.
I wonder, though, if the difference is not so much about pronunciation as how we hear it, how we count the syllables.
Jerry Friedman said,
December 6, 2021 @ 1:46 pm
Michael Watts: I don't remember ever hearing a two-syllable pronunciation of "nuclear", and neither Merriam-Webster nor American Heritage lists one. I have no trouble getting a definite schwa in there.
Jerry Packard said,
December 6, 2021 @ 2:03 pm
'truthular' = 'veridical' or not?
Haamu said,
December 6, 2021 @ 2:20 pm
I guess I'm with Terpomo on this. I can't recall ever hearing a purely two-syllable "nuclear." Maybe I just don't understand the concept of "syllable." I'd call it 2.5 syllables, or 3 syllables said quickly. The final /ə/ is always detectable in what I would call the "American standard" pronunciation.
The idea that the end of "nuclear" is perfectly homophonous with "clear" is baffling to me. I'll grant that there are probably lects where it's true; I just can't imagine which ones.
Terry K. said,
December 6, 2021 @ 2:25 pm
I'm American and can't imagine a two syllable pronunciation of "nuclear". I wonder, though, if it's not so much about different ways of pronouncing it as different ways of perceiving the same pronunciation.
Okay, I can imagine in my head the pronunciation with the 2nd syllable sounding like the word "clear", but I can't imagine it as something people actually say. For one thing, pronouncing it that way would require giving that 2nd syllable stress, making two stressed syllables. The vowel + R of "clear" (ear, fear, etc) only appears in stressed syllables. Whereas new – klee – er has vowels (or whatever you want to label the -er) that can be in unstressed syllables.
Michael Watts said,
December 6, 2021 @ 2:37 pm
I don't understand this claim. What's difficult about unstressed "clear"?
I would say, and did say above, that it makes sense to consider nuclear" a 2.5 syllable word, and "clear" a 1.5 syllable word. But "clear", bearing full stress, is never going to be a clear monosyllable in the same way that "her" is a clear monosyllable, because the FLEECE vowel, unlike NURSE, isn't compatible with pronouncing an [ɻ] and the obligatory retraction of the tongue produces a change in the vowel over the word.
Jerry Packard said,
December 6, 2021 @ 3:09 pm
With this kind of 1.5, 2.5 syllable subdivision, it might be useful to think in terms of a 'mora' framework.
Michael Watts said,
December 6, 2021 @ 3:19 pm
What would the mora analysis get us? What's the difference?
Jonathan Smith said,
December 6, 2021 @ 3:19 pm
Interesting… setting aside stress entirely, syllables of this basic shape seem to be somewhat marginal in English. E.g., there is a brand of baseball cards that I construed as disyllabic /fli.r/ as a kid but had never seen written; come to find out it is spelled "fleer" and presumably construed as one syllable by some. Also police, which I construe as one syllable but others as two…
Michael Watts said,
December 6, 2021 @ 3:23 pm
Here's the first example of the pronunciation of "nuclear" given by Youglish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td7Dcsco-WY#t=2162
Can we all agree that this represents a two-syllable form?
Jerry Packard said,
December 6, 2021 @ 3:40 pm
"What would the mora analysis get us? What's the difference?"
It opens the door for a different hierarchical analysis tree. The mora leads to the syllable which leads to the foot, for example. The subunits that affect stress could be mora-based, for example, vs. syllable-based. Mark L. would know as much about this as anyone.
Brett said,
December 6, 2021 @ 4:07 pm
A two-syllable pronunciation for nuclear inevitably reminds me of a humor piece from the last page of an issue of The New Yorker from the early 1990s. It was formatted as an interview with Kim Il-sung about the North Korean nuclear program. The gist was that the whole issue was a misunderstanding, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was not developing weapons, but was actually offering a "Nu-Clear-Ance Sale" on various nuclear-powered consumer technologies. ("Deluxe ham smoker: works up to fifty miles from ham!")
Jonathan Smith said,
December 6, 2021 @ 4:46 pm
@Michael Watts "Can we all agree that this represents a two-syllable form?"
No, of course not — The Entire Point is that these issues are not about objective phonetic substance. To me and apparently many others this is noo-klee-er.
Morten Jonsson said,
December 6, 2021 @ 4:48 pm
@Michael Watts
No. He says NOO-clee-ur. An unstressed "clear" (in American English) would become something like "clur." But even though says the word very fast, he clearly distinguishes the vowels.
Jerry Friedman said,
December 6, 2021 @ 4:48 pm
Michael Watts: I can't listen to the Youglish video at the moment, but I'd say in my speech "clear" is 1.05 syllables at the most, and I don't see why it isn't 1.0. "Nuclear" is over 2.5, rounding to 3, like "happier". (On the other hand, "fire" is two syllables for me.)
Terry K.: It might depend on what you mean by "unstressed". I'm sure I say "dog-ear" with much more stress on the first syllable than the second, though the second one isn't as completely unstressed as, say, the second syllable of "syllable". Likewise "footgear", "killdeer", "light-year", "root beer", "Shakespeare", and "wheatear". (Hey, two folk-etymologized birds. And thanks to RhymeZone for including light rhymes, though usually they get in the way.)
TR said,
December 6, 2021 @ 4:54 pm
For me (California English) nuclear is unambiguously disyllabic, and homophonous with new clear.
Zizoz said,
December 6, 2021 @ 4:59 pm
J.W. Brewer: I wouldn't say that "molecular" rhymes with "nucular", though, since the stressed vowel is different. For an example of this kind of almost-rhyme with "nuclear" in the standard pronunciation, I submit "pricklier".
cameron said,
December 6, 2021 @ 5:09 pm
"Nucular" is the jocular form of nuclear.
I remember some banter with a friend, back in the mid '80s, about whether the rhetorically grand way to refer to one's teeth should be "toothulars" or "dentiles".
Michael Watts said,
December 6, 2021 @ 5:24 pm
Well… I am likely to pronounce "new" with lips less rounded than they would be for the beginning of "nuclear". Phonemically identical, but perhaps not completely identical.
I was asking if this was the pronunciation everyone was failing to imagine, or if it might be what people had in mind as "three syllables".
Obama's pronunciation includes much less of a distinct retraction than is possible, and is very obviously two rhythmic syllables. I'd like to hear some examples of "clear" being more fully monosyllabic than Obama's "[nu-]clear".
Michael Watts said,
December 6, 2021 @ 5:26 pm
Responding separately to the merits of this claim, there was a good series of posts from MYL about the physical nature of syllables, which said that in fact there is a very close correspondence between the objective phonetics and human judgment of syllable count. In particular, in cases where humans give unclear judgments, the objective methods also give unclear judgments. So I don't think I'd agree that these issues aren't about the objective phonetic substance. Rather, the objective phonetic substance definitely includes the option that a sound might be 1.1 syllables.
Morten Jonsson said,
December 6, 2021 @ 5:36 pm
@Michael Watts
Obvious to you; not obvious at all to most Americans (outside of California, apparently). Because the syllable "-clear" in "nuclear" is unstressed, while it would be possible to pronounce it as one syllable, like the word "clear," it would sound overarticulated and unnatural. It's hard to think of an example where the word "clear" DOESN'T sound more fully monosyllabic than the syllable. Maybe if someone is speaking in an exaggeratedly slow and emphatic manner: IS THAT CLE-AR?
Matt said,
December 6, 2021 @ 5:54 pm
As an Australian, I definitely say “nuclear” as two syllables, and I was struggling to even imagine how it could be said as 3 until Morten broke it done above.
For me, the second syllable is pretty much a rhyme for “smear” etc, although it is only half-stressed, so it would come across as a bit of a forced rhyme in a limerick.
In Australia, we would pronounce that first syllable differently too, as “Nyoo” instead of “Noo”.
I can’t recall hearing anyone in Australia say “nucular” either, but it is a wide country so it may well be out there somewhere.
Antonio L. Banderas said,
December 6, 2021 @ 6:12 pm
In British Received Pronunciation, and most other non-rhotic (r-dropping) varieties of English, monosyllabic triphthongs with R are optionally distinguished from sequences with disyllabic realizations:
[aʊ̯ə̯] as in hour (compare with disyllabic "shower" [aʊ̯.ə])
[aɪ̯ə̯] as in fire (compare with disyllabic "higher" [aɪ̯.ə])
[ɔɪ̯ə̯] as in "loir" (compare with final disyllabic sequence in "employer" [ɔɪ̯.ə])
As [eɪ̯] and [əʊ̯] become [ɛə̯] and [ɔː] respectively before /r/, most instances of [eɪ̯.ə] and [əʊ̯.ə] are words with the suffix "-er". Other instances are loanwords, such as boa.
[aʊ̯ə̯, aɪ̯ə̯, ɔɪ̯ə̯] are sometimes written with ⟨awə, ajə, ɔjə⟩, or similarly. On Wikipedia, they are not considered to feature the approximants /w/ and /j/, following the analysis adopted by the majority of sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triphthong#English
Gregory Kusnick said,
December 6, 2021 @ 6:20 pm
My nuke is nuklier than your nuke.
Jerry Friedman said,
December 6, 2021 @ 7:02 pm
It's likelier that mine's nukelier, since yours is obviously sicklier.
Michael Watts said,
December 6, 2021 @ 7:38 pm
There is a specific example of these words presented in Matthew Ebel's song "Everybody Needs a Ninja", here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUWOMJE2nqM
It seems valuable to look at music for syllable analyses because the rhythm of the music makes notional syllables especially clear, though there is still some room for fudging and (especially) lengthening.
One of the verses of the song includes these lyrics:
They use their super ninja power
to kill someone at any hour
They could be hiding in your shower
You never know just where they're at
And the reason I find this so interesting is that it seems clear to me, listening to the song, that all of the following are true:
– "power" and "hour" are (as pronounced) monosyllables
– "shower" is, as pronounced, disyllabic
– "power", "hour", and "shower" all rhyme with each other
But it's very unexpected for a disyllable to be treated as a perfect rhyme for a monosyllable!
Anthony said,
December 6, 2021 @ 7:51 pm
Surely cochlear rhymes with nuclear. (And I, too, have never heard a two-syllable "nuclear.")
Terry K. said,
December 6, 2021 @ 8:05 pm
@Michael Watts
It's not about unstressed ear/ir (the beginning consonant is irrelevant) being difficult or not in an unstressed syllable (as distinct from secondary stress). It's that it's not one of the allowed vowels. For an unstressed syllable ending in R (or R followed by another consonant) the only vowel choice possible is, well, one that's arguably not a vowel but a syllabic R, and that's -er. Of course, that doesn't apply to all varieties of English. It clearly doesn't apply to non-rhotic English.
And the word clear, for me, is fully monosyllabic. Which is different from nuclear. I can, though, imagine a non-rhotic version of "clear" that's 1.5 syllables (or at least that I might think of that way). I'll confess, I can't imagine that rhotically.
I'm curious, Michael Watts, what variety of English you speak. Me, U.S., lower midwest.
Paul Garrett said,
December 6, 2021 @ 8:08 pm
Perhaps only incidental in some other comments: in my east-coast/west-coast/midwestern English, already "clear" can be the two obvious syllables, or, also, just one. "Nuclear" than be dealt with as "nu-clear", either way.
Also, there is "unclear"… :)
Jonathan Smith said,
December 6, 2021 @ 8:14 pm
Yeah, I should have said not straightforwardly related to phonetic substance, i.e., language-specific and individual-level structural concerns come into play. A 3rd grade teacher once marked me wrong for answering that "owl" is two syllables, where to her it was one — but doesn't matter who says it how, that word remains two syllables to me :D
Or similar to Antonio R. Banderas's words, Mandarin syllables like duo and yue tend to be perceived and reproduced by Am. Eng. speakers as two syllables for structural reasons, not phonetic ones.
Terry K. said,
December 6, 2021 @ 9:04 pm
P.S. Not quite relevant to the main discussion, but related, if I were to expand clear into two syllables, it would be kuh-leer, the K separated out.
J.W. Brewer said,
December 6, 2021 @ 9:05 pm
I am intrigued by the idea that songs might provide useful data here because of clearer syllable division, and whether any potential usefulness is cancelled out by the countervailing fact that singers can/do sometimes stretch what would otherwise be one syllable into two or squish what would otherwise be two into one, as may in either case be required to make the words fit the music. But for what it's worth, I have now relistened to the immortal Tuff Darts classic "(Your Love Is Like) Nuclear Waste" for the first time in some years, and it gives "nuclear" the full three-syllable treatment. But others are free to check out other songs whose lyrics include that word to see if there are contrary instances.
If the trouble in figuring out whether "nuclear" rhymes with one-syllable candidates like "smear" is that comparing an unstressed final syllable to a necessarily stressed monosyllable is inherently apples to oranges, maybe try a compound like "pap smear" or "wind shear"?
Jerry Friedman said,
December 6, 2021 @ 11:45 pm
J. W. Brewer and Anthony: According to the Official Definition of "rhyme", two words rhyme exactly if the last stressed vowel and everything after it is the same, but everything before it is different. So "nuclear" and "cochlear" don't rhyme exactly because of the u and the o. They're an example of "light rhyme", based on unstressed syllables. Likewise "wind shear" only light-rhymes with "Pap smear" and "Shakespeare".
I imagine "bouclier" was suggested because the vowel is the same as in "nuclear".
I would like to ask the people who sometimes pronounce "nuclear" as two syllables how many syllables they have in "happier" and "likelier". (Three in my mostly pre-NCVS northeastern Ohio English, a little influenced by some other places.)
Matt McIrvin said,
December 6, 2021 @ 11:54 pm
Two-syllable "nuclear" reminds me of the pun in Eurythmics and Elvis Costello's old song "Adrian", about the Cold War fears of a kid: "And the world is slowly dawning / To wake up to a new clear morning"…
Chas Belov said,
December 7, 2021 @ 2:57 am
Nu-klee-ur here (2.75 to 3 syllables)
clear (at most 1.25 syllables)
I think I would find nu-kleer (2 syllables) as jarring as I find nu-kyu-lur.
Thank you for the Adrian song, which I enjoyed. I hear their "clear" as klee-ur (1.5 syllables). I don't know whether I would have caught it if I hadn't been primed for it, but it doesn't match the "clear" that I say.
Antonio L. Banderas said,
December 7, 2021 @ 3:06 am
@Michael Watts
Here is John C. Well's opinion on the issue
http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2009/12/triphthongs-anyone.html
Peter Taylor said,
December 7, 2021 @ 3:26 am
OED gives the British pronunciation as /'njuːklɪə/ vs /klɪə/ for "clear".
Philip Taylor said,
December 7, 2021 @ 4:10 am
… whilst the LPD gives it as /ˈnjuːk li‿ə/. As usual, I disagree with JW w.r.t. the syllable boundaries — for me, it is clearly /ˈnjuː kli‿ə/.
seebs said,
December 7, 2021 @ 9:04 am
I used to dislike "needs verbed" (although I always thought it was more like "needs to be verbed" than "needs verbing"), but as it's become more common I've started thinking it's a clear improvement in the language, letting us drop a couple of syllables.
Sometimes when I hear a noise in another room and don't feel like investigating I just yell "catn't", and it's not as though the furball in question is any more or less persuaded by this than any other phrasing.
Honestly I started being a lot more skeptical about claims of error when I found out that some of the things I thought were errors were not merely "a different dialect's way of saying that", but "a different dialect's way of making a distinction my dialect could not concisely express".
Jason M said,
December 7, 2021 @ 9:08 am
Never occurred to me to make nuclear a 2-syllable word (“President’s Day weekend, NEW CLEARance sale. Everything must go”), but then I wonder how many of us whose training is mostly biology-based say it with only 2 syllables. I think it’s definitely rare (but I’ll listen for it now so as to have some actual prospective data), and my theory is because NUCLEUS is 3, hence NEW-CLEE-ER.
Alexander Browne said,
December 7, 2021 @ 10:19 am
In my upper midwest lect, I think I normally say three syllable 'nu.kli.ɚ, but if I say the word slowly and carefully, I say it with two syllables 'nu.klɪɹ, exactly as "new clear".
I can say it carefully as three syllables, but it seems wrong, like I'm getting too close to nu.kjə.lɚ.
Coby Lubliner said,
December 7, 2021 @ 10:39 am
How about "it's not just clear, it's too clear!"? To me it rhymes perfectly with "nuclear".
Philip Taylor said,
December 7, 2021 @ 10:52 am
Well, in mind mind I can here " it's too clear!" rhyming with "it's new clear", but not with "it's nuclear". "Saying it carefully", to use Alexander's phrase, I (clearly) hear /ˈnjuː kli ə/ (one octave higher for the first syllable).
Daniel Barkalow said,
December 7, 2021 @ 1:21 pm
I think I always use 3 syllables, but I'm sure I hear both about equally, and wouldn't be able to listen to a talk with multiple presenters and identify which way each person said it. It's not contrastive in English, and when processing speech, I therefore just hear it the way I produce it, regardless of what the speaker actually produces.
I like to refer to things that are complicated and not explained in sufficient detail for a general audience as "unclear", 3 syllables, with the stress on the first.
Michael Watts said,
December 7, 2021 @ 2:17 pm
@Chas Belov
Did you listen to the Obama quote? What do you think of it?
Michael Watts said,
December 7, 2021 @ 2:19 pm
Just to be clear, you use the NURSE vowel for the second syllable of "nuclear"? I'm having trouble with the idea of the sequence /ɪɹ/.
Alexander Browne said,
December 7, 2021 @ 2:26 pm
@ Michael Watts
No, the NEAR vowel. I copied that transcription from Wiktionary's clear entry.
Rodger C said,
December 8, 2021 @ 10:41 am
I'm having trouble with the idea of the sequence /ɪɹ/.
I find it perfectly normal. How do you pronounce "ear"?
fleetwood george said,
December 8, 2021 @ 8:05 pm
I'm not Michael Watts, but I'm pretty sure I pronounce it [iɚ]
Jerry Friedman said,
December 8, 2021 @ 8:55 pm
I think I have that sequence in "sightseer" (three syllables) but not in "seer" or "ear" (one each).
Michael Watts said,
December 9, 2021 @ 4:21 pm
Taking /ɪ/ as the vowel in "hit", it seems clear to me that if you try to replace hit's final /t/ with an R, you get "her" (or rather, an impossible sound that will devolve into "her"), but you most definitely will not get "here", which requires the FLEECE vowel /i/.
Philip Taylor said,
December 9, 2021 @ 5:16 pm
For me, replacing the final /t/ in "hit" with an R, I get "hir", not "her". Why would one get "her" ?
Antonio L. Banderas said,
December 9, 2021 @ 6:26 pm
@Watts
That last statement doesn't follow the Wells's Lexical Set. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_set
Compare https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:English_pronunciation#Vowels
Terry K. said,
December 9, 2021 @ 8:25 pm
@Michael Watts, I suggest what you say would probably be nicely true had you said "I" instead of "you". I don't doubt that it's true for your own speech, but your assumption that it's true for everyone is incorrect. For me, "hit" minus t plus r is close to "here" and very different from "her". "Her" for me is not a vowel plus r but rather a single vowel/r sound.
TR said,
December 10, 2021 @ 1:54 pm
I would like to ask the people who sometimes pronounce "nuclear" as two syllables how many syllables they have in "happier" and "likelier"
For me those are clearly (cularly?) trisyllabic. Which isn't to say that the phonetic realizations of the -ier might not overlap with those of the -ear of nuclear, of course.
Jerry Friedman said,
December 10, 2021 @ 5:33 pm
TR: Thanks. And very daring of you to attempt a double negative at LanguageLog, but you succeeded!
Michael Watts said,
December 10, 2021 @ 10:55 pm
Well, what you've written doesn't really specify what you mean; compare the fact that "sir" and "her" are perfect rhymes.
But I acknowledged that replacing the /t/ with an R gives you a weird sound. That's what I meant by saying you get "an impossible sound that will devolve into 'her'". So the reason you would get "her" is that you can't say "hi+r", and "her" is the closest possible sound.
The lexical set approach makes no claim that the vowel of NEAR is any more less close to FLEECE than it is to GOAT. Those are just three separate and coequal sets. And that approach has many advantages. But in this case, we're asking what happens when an arrhotic vowel is rhotified. This is a question that the lexical set approach cannot answer, because it looks at a finer level of sounds than the lexical set approach is even willing to admit exists.
I am claiming that the NEAR vowel is in fact the rhotification of FLEECE, and is not the rhotification of GOAT, or putting things another way, the vowels of NEAR and FLEECE are more closely related to each other than either is to GOAT. This claim does make some predictions, such as: "if a sound change S -> R took place, the word 'close' would not end up featuring the NEAR vowel".
I am further claiming that NEAR also isn't the rhotification of KIT, and that the rhotification of KIT is NURSE. This claim conflicts with the idea that "near" should be rendered with the phoneme sequence /ɪɹ/, at least to the extent that we hope for /ɪ/ to mean similar things when we use it to represent the pronunciation of different syllables.
Michael Watts said,
December 10, 2021 @ 11:33 pm
Because it was fun, I put together a table of distinct rhotic and arrhotic lexical set items in my idiolect, and what I think the 'equivalences' are between them. I didn't bother with the unstressed vowels.
Arrhotic: KIT, DRESS, TRAP, LOT, STRUT, FOOT, FLEECE, GOOSE, GOAT, FACE, PRICE, MOUTH, CHOICE
Rhotic: NURSE, NEAR, SQUARE, START, NORTH
and the equivalencies:
KIT NURSE
DRESS SQUARE
TRAP SQUARE
LOT START
STRUT NURSE
FOOT NURSE
FLEECE NEAR
GOOSE ??? [†]
GOAT NORTH
FACE ??? I pronounce "mayor" with SQUARE, and was taught to
pronounce "mind flayer" the same way [= "mind flare"]
PRICE "fire"; ambiguously monosyllabic
MOUTH "hour"; ambiguously monosyllabic
CHOICE "lawyer"; unambiguously disyllabic
[†] The examples of the CURE vowel listed in the table in wikipedia are: poor, tourist, pure, plural, and jury. This presents some problems for me: "pure", "plural" and "jury" all use the NURSE vowel, and so does "cure". But "poor" and "tourist" don't. "Poor" uses NORTH. "Tourist" uses GOOSE, which has no recognized rhotic form. This is also true of "tour" and "tourism", but not of "tournament", where I use NURSE. I know that there are people out there using "rhotic GOOSE" in "tournament" too.
Just to make what I mean about "poor" really explicit, I believe that "poor", "pore", and "pour" are all pronounced identically, using the NORTH vowel, and that "purr" is distinct from them, and uses NURSE. I'm kind of surprised to see that the Cambridge dictionary identifies the US pronunciation of "poor" as rhyming with "tour" and with "pure", but not with "more".
I also think that if rhotic vowels are broken out as their own lexical sets, such that START and PALM are different, we should also have a separate set for the lambdic vowel in "pull", which I would identify as failing to rhyme with every lexical set paradigm word. "Tall" seems like a smootherfit into the existing LOT / THOUGHT / CLOTH / PALM category.
Gregory Kusnick said,
December 11, 2021 @ 12:59 am
Michael, what vowel do you use for the first syllable of mirror? For me it's KIT, which you seem to think is not possible.
Philip Taylor said,
December 11, 2021 @ 4:58 am
Michael — « the reason you would get "her" is that you can't say "hi+r", and "her" is the closest possible sound ».
Well, I accept that perhaps you cannot say "hi+r", but I don't believe that I am unique in being able to — for me, /hɪr/ is no harder than /hɜː/ or /hɜr/. As Gregory points out, that same /ɪr/ group occurs in "dirigible", "lyric", "mirror", "piriform", "Siri", "tiramisu", "virulent", "Wirral" and so on.
Philip Taylor said,
December 11, 2021 @ 5:22 am
… and, of course, in "Hiroshima".
Philip Anderson said,
December 11, 2021 @ 5:26 am
For me, British, non-rhotic, replacing the T in HIT with R gives ‘here’ with a diphthong, not ‘her’ which has my NURSE sound (apparently completely different from yours). Replacing the T in FOOT gives my CURE vowel (as in tour but not poor)
Nuclear is trisyllabic, whereas clear is normally monosyllabic; however, it doesn’t sound wrong as a disyllable and I’d accept a nuclear/clear rhyme, at least if nuclear came first.
Re -ula being a diminutive, a nebula is quite big.
Philip Anderson said,
December 11, 2021 @ 5:32 am
@Philip Taylor
For me, those words don’t have an R at the end of a syllable, but at the start of the next one. Syllable-final R makes the ‘here’ diphthong (NEAR vowel).
Philip Taylor said,
December 11, 2021 @ 6:53 am
(Philip A) — Well, needless to say, John Wells disagrees ! //ˈdɪr ɪdʒ əb əl/, /ˈlɪr ɪk/, /ˈmɪr ə ǁ -ər/, /ˈpɪr ɪ fɔːm/, (no entry for "Siri"), /ˌtɪr əm i ˈsuː/, /ˈvɪr ʊl ənt/, /ˈwɪr əl/. Oddly enough, "Hiroshima" (the only word — apart from French "hirondelle" — to come immediately to mind when trying to think of words commencing "hir") has the /r/ in the second syllable : /hɪ ˈrɒʃ ɪm ə /. I don't always agree with JW's syllabification, so I adduce these only as alternative views rather than as statements of fact.
Terry K. said,
December 11, 2021 @ 10:22 am
@Michael Watts
While I disagree with you on how the r vowels pair up with non r vowels, I do agree on the idea of lambdic (l) vowel sets. And palm is a poor word choice for a lexical set, since it's lambdic for some speakers.
Jerry Friedman said,
December 11, 2021 @ 10:28 am
Gregory Kusnick: I'm not speaking for Michael Watts, but most Americans use the NEAR vowel in the first syllable of "mirror", and for some of us, "mirror" and "mere" sound similar if not identical.
Some other words that the British and even John Wells might pronounce with /ɪɹ/: "squirrel", "cirrus", and "irrigate", "irredeemable", etc. And note the three /ɪ/s in "'Tirra lirra,' by the river / Sang Sir Lancelot."
Michael Watts: Although pronouncing "poor" the same as "pour" is common in the U.S., I think it's considered non-standard. The American Heritage Dictionary gives a pronunciation with the FOOT vowel as the only one, and Merriam-Webster gives it first, with the NORTH vowel as the only other. "Pore" is often used to indicate non-standard speech, as in "Pore Jud is Daid", and I don't think that's the "sez" kind of eye dialect.
Whether the vowel in "tour", "boor", "moor", "lure", etc. is FOOT or GOOSE seems arbitrary to me.
Jerry Friedman said,
December 11, 2021 @ 10:30 am
Philip Anderson: Re -ula being a diminutive, a nebula is quite big.
But it subtends a much smaller angle than a typical cloud does.
Gregory Kusnick said,
December 11, 2021 @ 11:27 am
Actually I'm going to disagree with much of Philip's list. For me, "lyric", "Siri", and "virulent" have the NEAR vowel.
"Dirigible" and "Hiroshima" (stress on the second syllable) have schwa in the first syllable.
I don't have much occasion to say "Wirral" and would probably tend to rhyme it with "squirrel" (i.e. NURSE) but could be persuaded it ought to be KIT.
I'm aware that many people say "mirror" with the NEAR vowel, but that feels wrong in my mouth. I suppose that make me a weird case, since I have no problem with NEAR in "lyric". Maybe it has something to do with the initial consonant.
Philip Taylor said,
December 11, 2021 @ 12:21 pm
Well, I too rhyme "Wirral" with "squirrel", but for me both take a clear KIT vowel, very distinct from NURSE. The nearest I can find with a NURSE vowel are "Wurzel" and "squirm". "Hiroshima" I stress on the third syllable (KIT – schwa – FLEECE – schwa).
Michael Watts said,
December 11, 2021 @ 9:10 pm
I can't really agree; I see no difference between "pore" and "sez".
Here's "Poor Unfortunate Souls": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-9B9x5YCcI . Ursula, unlike Sebastian, is not portrayed with a non-standard accent. But she pronounces "poor" the normal way, with NORTH.
Michael Watts said,
December 11, 2021 @ 9:13 pm
And here's Obama saying "poor", again pulled from Youglish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td7Dcsco-WY#t=1160
Michael Watts said,
December 11, 2021 @ 9:16 pm
This is a strange list for me, since "tour" and "lure" rhyme, and "boor" and "moor" rhyme, but "tour" and "moor" do not rhyme.
Tour / lure use a vowel that can only be GOOSE and can't be FOOT. Boor / moor use a rhotic vowel, NORTH.
Morten Jonsson said,
December 12, 2021 @ 12:22 am
@Michael Watts
I do appreciate being informed that I and my American compatriots don’t pronounce things at all the way we think we do. But if we’re mistaken, then so is Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Their page for “poor” provides sound clips for both pronunciations: the first is the one you claim doesn’t exist, and the second is the one you consider “normal,” where it’s a homonym for “pore.” Since you somehow manage to hear Ursula and President Obama saying the latter, I’m curious to know what you make of the Webster’s clips. Do they sound just the same, and the Webster’s people are just fooling themselves? Is the first one different, but not even Americans actually say it that way?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poor
Chas Belov said,
December 12, 2021 @ 12:50 am
@Michael Watts: I don't see a link to an Obama quote, so I'm not sure where to find it.
Michael Watts said,
December 12, 2021 @ 3:54 am
Do they sound just the same? No; I can distinguish the two recordings from each other. In running speech, I would very likely interpret both of them as using NORTH, but affected to various degrees by other considerations. (Accent? Surrounding sounds?)
Focusing on the recordings, what really jumps out at me is that the second one (ˈpȯr) sounds unnatural. I'd prefer the recording at "pour". (Also ˈpȯr.) (I'm also kind of intrigued that they recorded different examples for pronunciations that are, according to them, identical.)
There should be a link to youtube in my comment?
Philip Anderson said,
December 12, 2021 @ 4:24 am
Having listened to the Merriam-Webster pronunciations of ‘poor’ and also ‘tour’:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tour
1) Their second pronunciation of ‘poor’ is like mine
2) Their first is a little different but essentially the same (NORTH) vowel.
3) Neither rhyme with their pronunciation of ‘tour’, which is like mine.
J.W. Brewer said,
December 12, 2021 @ 9:23 am
For whatever reasons "poor" seems an unusually variable word. I wonder if it was a mistake for Wells to put it in his CURE set in the first place as opposed to treating it as an unpredictable oddity like "tomato." You can easily find descriptions in the literature of e.g. a pure-poor split or a poor-pour merger, yet when I reflect on my own usage of words other than "poor" it does not always fit the supposed patterns. E.g. I have a different vowel in "sure" than in "pure" and a different vowel in "tour" than "poor." I do have "poor" and "pour" as homophonous, but whether my "pore" is the same or slightly different is difficult for me to assess reliably. But if I do have a difference between "pore" on the one hand and "poor"/"pour" on the other, it's parallel to that between freestanding "clear" and the "-clear" in "nuclear," which is I guess where we came in.
Morten Jonsson said,
December 12, 2021 @ 10:29 am
@Michael Watts
"I'm also kind of intrigued that they recorded different examples for pronunciations that are, according to them, identical."
They don't say they're identical. The first clip is demonstrating pu̇r, not pȯr. In other words, for Webster's they're different vowels. So here's where we are: for you the first, which according to Webster's rhymes with "tour" (tu̇r), actually rhymes with "pore," and the second, which according to Webster's does rhyme with "pore" ("pȯr" is how they give both "poor" ex. 2 and "pore": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pore), just sounds unnatural. It's hard to know what to say to that.
@Philip Anderson
The Webster's pronunciations of "poor" may not rhyme with "tour" for you, but the first one does for Webster's: pu̇r and tu̇r.
Philip Taylor said,
December 12, 2021 @ 10:57 am
« But she pronounces "poor" the normal way, with NORTH ». I cannot help but feel that one man's "normal way" is another man's "totally abnormal" way. In my idiolect, and in the topolect of most southern Britons, the vowel sounds of "poor" and NORTH are as different as chalk and cheese. For me, "poor" is a perfect rhyme for "boor", "dour", "goor" (as in "jaggery goor"), "moor", "nour" *as in "deglet nour dates"), "poor", and "tour", and an imperfect rhyme for "cure" and "lure", both of which are differentiated by the y-glide preceding the /ʊə/. NORTH, on the other hand, has the same vowel as "bore", "core", "four", "gnaw", "gore", "hoar", "jaw", "law", "lore", "more", "or", "pore", "raw", "saw", "sore", "tore", "wore", "whore" and "yore" (/ɔː/).
Philip Anderson said,
December 12, 2021 @ 3:41 pm
@Philip Taylor
Curious. I use the NORTH vowel in poor, boor, moor, door, although I’ve lived in Southern Britain all my life, and I have never heard your pronunciation here. The Oxford dictionaries allow both, but I associate the alternative with Scotland or the North of England, sometimes spelt out as in Sheriffmuir, or “puir wee bairns.”
https://www.lexico.com/definition/poor
Philip Taylor said,
December 12, 2021 @ 4:29 pm
OK, for me "door" has NORTH but "dour" does not — would you also make that distinction, Philip ?
Philip Anderson said,
December 12, 2021 @ 6:31 pm
I would rhyme dour with tour, not door, although I used to rhyme it with tower. I can’t think of any -oor word that doesn’t have the NORTH vowel for me, though my instinct would be to rhyme a new example with tour, which seems odd.
Jerry Friedman said,
December 12, 2021 @ 6:47 pm
Michael Watts: This is a strange list for me, since "tour" and "lure" rhyme, and "boor" and "moor" rhyme, but "tour" and "moor" do not rhyme.
Tour / lure use a vowel that can only be GOOSE and can't be FOOT. Boor / moor use a rhotic vowel, NORTH.
Sorry, it hadn't occurred to me that any American would rhyme "boor" and "moor" with "core". The "tour" pronunciation is the only one in Merriam-Webster. Live and learn.
I may have time to respond to your comments on "poor" later.
Jason M said,
December 13, 2021 @ 9:45 am
Circling back to “nuclear” pronunciation, I did a Twitter poll, which would largely mean respondents in the biology-medicine sphere on “how do you pronounce nuclear”. Options were new-kyu-lar, nyu-kyu-lar, new-clee-ar, new-cleer (2 syllables). Of 23 votes, 4% for new-kyu-lar, 0% for nyu, 70% for 3 syllable, 26% for 2 syllable.
So fully a quarter of the largely bio folk claim to do a 2-syllable, whereas I had thought we pretty much all do 3.
Philip Taylor said,
December 13, 2021 @ 10:45 am
Jason, how (ideally expressed in terms of the IPA) were your informants intended to differentiate between "new" and "nyu" ? In my (British) idiolect, they are seemingly identical.
J.W. Brewer said,
December 13, 2021 @ 10:53 am
Here's a comment from another thread a few years back by Michael Watts, who has also contributed to this thread, noting that Wells' CURE set is not a coherent set for him, with its supposed members in fact having at least three different vowels in his idiolect. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=37429#comment-1548742
The same is true for me although I suspect there might be a bit of variation between me and him in exactly what the three vowels are and which words in the supposed set have them. (For me, there's also some interesting variation between monosyllables and stressed first syllables in longer words, e.g. I do not consistently pronounce "pure" the same way I pronounce the beginning of "purity" and do not consistently pronounce "tour" the same way I pronounce the beginning of "tourist.") This is particularly interesting because all of Wells' other sets ARE coherent sets for me, i.e. for any given set I use more or less the same vowel for all the standard example words,* but not for the CURE set. So maybe this is the single "Homer nods" flaw in the Wellsian model?
*My GOAT vowel, as is common for AmEng speakers from the Philadelphia-through-Baltimore portion of the eastern seaboard, can be very fronted and dipthongized EXCEPT when it is followed by /l/ or /r/. So you could either maybe say I have a GOAT/GOAL split, or just say that it's the same phoneme that happens to be realized differently in specific contexts.
Alexander Browne said,
December 13, 2021 @ 11:01 am
Philip Taylor: I'm not Jason, but in my Amer. Eng. "new" is /nu/, as compared with /nju/ for "nyu". (The OED and Wiktionary both have /n(j)u/ for "new" in North Amer. Eng. so some speakers must have the /-j-/ glide in North America, but it's not common in the Midwest or Canada in my experience.)
Philip Taylor said,
December 13, 2021 @ 11:12 am
Ah, thank you Alexander. In which case, were the same question to be put (in the same form) to British biologists, one might ask them to choose between "noo" and "nyu" — would that be correct ?
Jerry Friedman said,
December 13, 2021 @ 2:48 pm
Alexander Browne: Wikipedia has a map showing two areas of the South as the only parts of the U.S. with a distinction between "dew" and "do", but I think you can hear it a lot in the Northeast too.
Philip Anderson said,
December 13, 2021 @ 6:54 pm
Having looked at the complete lexical set,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_set
I find all the sets coherent in my speech, except for ‘poor’ which does not belong with the CURE set for me. I don’t have the RP pronunciation of ’happy’ either.
Philip Taylor said,
December 14, 2021 @ 6:46 am
This are my outliers : KIT: milk; DRESS: shelf; TRAP: scalp; STRUT: pulse; FOOT: full, wolf; THOUGHT: jaw; GOAT: roll; NORTH: for, war; FORCE: four, war, CURE: poor, tourist, plural. I am aware that I HAPPY-tense.
In the cases of milk, shelf, scalp, pulse, wolf, it is worth noting that calf is not a BATH outlier for me, so more is involved that just a following /l/; and for me, NORTH and FORCE have an identical vowel sound.
Philip Anderson said,
December 14, 2021 @ 8:24 am
@Philip Taylor
Do you have a vowel from another set in those outliers, or do they just sound different from the rest?
Do you pronounce the ‘l’ in ‘calf’, which I don’t?
I assume you distinguish between the THOUGHT and NORTH/FORCE vowels, which again I don’t?
Just curious.
Philip Taylor said,
December 14, 2021 @ 9:29 am
I didn't check for other-set membership, but I will; however, I surmise that the sound(s) that I make for the vowel(s) in "milk", "shelf", etc., are more closely related to their "home" set than to any other, but to my ear they are clearly distinct sounds. No /l/ for me in "calf", but a definite /l/ in "milk", shelf", etc., so I think that you have identified the key difference there. And yes, for me the vowel in THOUGHT is different from (?more fronted, more rounded?) that in NORTH & FORCE, but the latter two are identical. Interestingly, I have the same vowel in "forge" (v) and "thought", so my "forge" (v) has a diffent vowel to my FORCE but my "forge" (sb) has the same vowel as my FORCE (and my NORTH).
Terry K. said,
December 14, 2021 @ 12:21 pm
Other than vowels before L, like with Philip Anderson, all the sets are coherent for me except CURE, where "poor" has FORCE, and "tourist" it's a tossup whether it joins "tour" in the force group or if it's in the CURE, or a variation of the CURE set that's closer /uɝ/ (maybe /ʊɝ) versus the set typically sounding identical to /ɝ/ (ər) to my ears/brain (as I say them).
As for vowels before L's, most notably, "palm" for me doesn't have the PALM vowel, which I think of as the "father" vowel.
Michael Watts said,
December 14, 2021 @ 6:40 pm
I'm not Philip Taylor, but his list is really making a good case for lambdic vowel sets.
For me: "milk" uses DRESS. "Scalp" uses what I would prefer to describe as a lambdic vowel not parallel to any of the listed sets. So do "pulse" and "full", which have the same vowel as each other, but not the same vowel as "scalp". (The vowel of scalp also appears in shall / pal / dally / sally / etc.)
I'm happy identifying the vowel in "wolf" as FOOT. I'm happy calling "roll" GOAT. I agree in full with "jaw" being THOUGHT, "for" and "war" being NORTH, and "four" and "war" being FORCE (=NORTH).
There is no /l/ in the word "calf". That's not because I would have difficulty pronouncing it; the word just doesn't contain an /l/.
Philip Taylor said,
December 14, 2021 @ 7:28 pm
I think that whether or not there is an /l/ in "calf" is very much open to debate. You have no /l/, John Wells has no /l/, and I have no /l/, but that does not mean that no-one in the world pronounces the word with an /l/. Spelling pronunciation exists. For example, I invariably pronounce England as /ˈeŋ ɡlənd/, simply because of the spelling. And I pronounce the second vowel in "innovative" as /ɒ/ (ɪn ˈɒ və tɪv), for exactly the same reason (the more common pronunciation with /ɪ/ always strikes me as totally unjustifiable, and John Wells' /ˈɪn əʊ veɪt ɪv/ seems, well, just "wrong". So I would never go along with a statement such as "there is no /l/ in calf", unless the author were to add "in my idiolect".
Michael Watts said,
December 15, 2021 @ 1:07 am
This comment makes no sense if you have no /l/ in the word "calf".
Philip Taylor said,
December 15, 2021 @ 4:40 am
Correct, Michael, but it was only when Philip Anderson asked if I had an /l/ in "calf" that I realised that I did not, long after making the comment to which you refer. And upon further reflection, I now know that I have an /l/ in "calving" and two /l/s in "calf-length", so there is at least one context in which I have an /l/ in "calf". And in that context, "calf" is still a member of the BATH set.