1. I am not sure I agree with less vowel complexity in American English. This is because of the complexity of post-vocalic l and r in American English greatly complicates the vowels in actual use. 2. The discussion would be better to deal with 'North American English' and include Canada. 3. Phonemic analysis is a misleading oversimplification, since the phoneme can not be found in actual speech--not speech production, not speech transmission (acoustics), and not speech perception.
@@cejannuzi hi, thank you for the thoughtful comments. 1. To me, vocalic r is just a vowel colored by r, so I don't think it adds complexity in vowel phoneme classification. Whether vocalic rs need to have their own IPA symbols is still a contentious topic among linguists. 2. Canadians are viewed as speaking the General Accent. 3. True, there are many allophones in phonological settings.
@@NanheeByrnesPhD The reason post-vocalic r and l do more than add color is that speech is not spoken in segments. Speech is really co-articulated. So what native speakers think are 'units' of sound in their own grasp of their spoken language is quite different than the approaches that are used in academic niches to analyze speech, including what gets used in ELT as 'phonetics and phonology'. Literacy in an alphabetic language also produces perceptual artifacts of phonetic, phonological and morphophonological nature, and linguistics has tried to systematize them with tools like IPA. But IPA and the like create segments where none really exist in speech.
@@NanheeByrnesPhD 2. Canadians are viewed as speaking the General Accent. By whom? Perhaps by some academics classifying things. But most people don't understand this. They think along national and nationalist lines. Also, a lot of EFL teachers and students don't understand any of that. They think people speak General American or British RP and then are shocked when they go abroad to find out that the models in the classroom don't sound much of anything like real speech in most places.
1. I am not sure I agree with less vowel complexity in American English. This is because of the complexity of post-vocalic l and r in American English greatly complicates the vowels in actual use.
2. The discussion would be better to deal with 'North American English' and include Canada.
3. Phonemic analysis is a misleading oversimplification, since the phoneme can not be found in actual speech--not speech production, not speech transmission (acoustics), and not speech perception.
@@cejannuzi hi, thank you for the thoughtful comments. 1. To me, vocalic r is just a vowel colored by r, so I don't think it adds complexity in vowel phoneme classification. Whether vocalic rs need to have their own IPA symbols is still a contentious topic among linguists. 2. Canadians are viewed as speaking the General Accent. 3. True, there are many allophones in phonological settings.
@@NanheeByrnesPhD The reason post-vocalic r and l do more than add color is that speech is not spoken in segments. Speech is really co-articulated. So what native speakers think are 'units' of sound in their own grasp of their spoken language is quite different than the approaches that are used in academic niches to analyze speech, including what gets used in ELT as 'phonetics and phonology'. Literacy in an alphabetic language also produces perceptual artifacts of phonetic, phonological and morphophonological nature, and linguistics has tried to systematize them with tools like IPA. But IPA and the like create segments where none really exist in speech.
@@NanheeByrnesPhD 2. Canadians are viewed as speaking the General Accent.
By whom? Perhaps by some academics classifying things. But most people don't understand this. They think along national and nationalist lines. Also, a lot of EFL teachers and students don't understand any of that. They think people speak General American or British RP and then are shocked when they go abroad to find out that the models in the classroom don't sound much of anything like real speech in most places.
@@cejannuzi you have good points. That's why there's the distinction of phonemes, phones, rhythm, pitch contour, intonation, etc.