>From: Lucy Series <[log in to unmask]>
>
>Dear all,
>
>I am looking for a phonetic contrast which is difficult for English
>speakers to perceive, as a control stimulus in a study we are setting up.
Two that boggle my mind in native English speakers are the vowels in
"ing/ink" and "ang/ank". The question is are they long or short. If one
were to take a published input source, like m-w.com, cut out the vowels from
"win/wink/wing" and "ban/bang/bank" would they all be judged "short" as
every dictionary says. My judgment is that all dictionaries are wrong, and
only these non ng/nk words have short vowels. The ng/nk vowels are long.
Ive looked at spectrographs of the vowels in win/wing/wink and can sort out
the difference in win from the other two. It's obvious to hear them as
well. But I think perhaps that others might not either "hear" them, be
influenced by another language, or they may be trained not to acknowledge a
difference. These same native speakers say the word "English" has two
short "i"s. Just incredible to me.
Tom Z
|