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Curious facts about /HH/

(1) I spells Vowel no. 2 in plenty of words that follow Rule 1 Short (LITTER,
SITTING, BICKER, MISTER, DIMPLE) and Rule 2 (BIT, MILK, ADMIT,
TIN, ENLIST), but there are a few exceptions such as VISIT or MIMIC,
which show a short pronunciation in spite of the absence of a consonant
cluster.
(2) One of the peculiarities of RP is the use of three weak vowels for
unstressed syllables, whereas other accents like GA or Australian English
make use of schwa on almost every occasion, probably because /H+ T/ can
also occur in stressed syllables (DISTANCE, BUTCHER) and, therefore,
their use in unstressed syllables does not contribute to a uniform
distribution of phonemes. The three weak vowels of RP are /?+ H+ T/. The
most frequent one is schwa; the least, /T/1. Look up the transcription
of DESIRE, WISHES and WANTED in an RP-oriented
pronunciation dictionary. What symbol can you see?
(3) RP speakers still associate /H/ with E-affix-based untressed syllables. The
trouble with E-affixes (see table below) is that they also have a strong
pronunciation in those unstressed syllables for reasons of a varied nature
(prosodic, etymological, grammatical, semantic):
affix or ending Weak pronunciation Strong pronunciation Reason for strong
pronunciation is…

BE-, DE-, DES-, /H/ /e/ prosodic (syllable


EN-, EM-, EX- with primary or
RE- secondary stress)

-ICE /Hr/ /`Hr/ prosodic (syllable


with primary or
secondary stress)

-ACE /Hr/ (or /?s/ in /dHr/ prosodic (syllable


commoner with primary or
words) secondary stress)

-ET /Hs/ /dH/ etymological (recent


French loanword)

-AGE /HcY/ /@9Y/ etymological (recent


French loanword)

1
The use of Vowel no. 9 as a weak vowel in unstressed syllables is also falling into disuse in RP. /T/ has
been the pronunciation of <U> by default in word-internal syllables immediately after a primary or
secondary stress; for example, ‘ARGUMENT, RI’DICULOUS, ‘AMBULANCE. However, recent
1 allow the use of schwa in that position.
editions of pronunciation dictionaries based on RP also
27816 © Ignacio Guillén Galve. The information provided here is for the most part based on
Timothy Bozman’s coursebook Sound Barriers (Zaragoza, GORFISA), used in Licenciatura English
pronunciation courses at UZ since the 1980s. Dr Ignacio Guillén revised the 1997 edition of SB.
-ATE /Hs/ (or /?t/ in /dHs/ grammatical (verb)
commoner
words)
-ISE /Hr/ 1. /h9y/ 1. etymological
(recent French
loanword)

2. grammatical
2. /`Hy/ (derived verb) or
prosodic (syllable
with primary stress)

-INE /Hm/ 1. /h9m/ 1. semantic (name of


chemical material)
or etymological
(recent French
loanword)

2. /`Hm/ 2. semantic (learned


animal or mineral
adjective) or
grammatical (verb
made up by prefix +
stem)

(4) /H/ is an oddity in BUILD and GUILT (and their derivatives: BUILDER,
BUILDING, GUILTY, etc), in GUILD and GUINEA /!fHmH/, in BISCUIT
and CIRCUIT /!aHrjHs !r29jHs/, in BUSY, BUSINESS, MINUTE (the unit of
measurement) and LETTUCE, and in WOMEN, ENGLAND, ENGLISH,
PRETTY, MOUNTAIN, FOREIGN and SOVEREIGN.

2
27816 © Ignacio Guillén Galve. The information provided here is for the most part based on
Timothy Bozman’s coursebook Sound Barriers (Zaragoza, GORFISA), used in Licenciatura English
pronunciation courses at UZ since the 1980s. Dr Ignacio Guillén revised the 1997 edition of SB.

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