Timeline for Pronunciation of 'Fen', 'Fan', and 'Fang' in English
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 26, 2015 at 10:25 | comment | added | Araucaria - him | Your transcriptions are absolutely correct for Standard British as transcribed by most phoneticians, dictionaries and EFL publications. | |
| Oct 23, 2015 at 21:02 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackEnglishLL/status/657663479726362624 | ||
| Oct 23, 2015 at 10:07 | history | migrated | from english.stackexchange.com (revisions) | ||
| Oct 19, 2015 at 5:27 | answer | added | Patrick | timeline score: 0 | |
| Oct 18, 2015 at 1:24 | answer | added | Nihilist_Frost | timeline score: 3 | |
| Oct 18, 2015 at 0:03 | comment | added | epetorti | @mitch Wasn't very clear in my earlier reply. I can say those words just fine. I wanted examples of other words with similar sounds to try and understand what the difference between the sounds are. I'm guessing most of you guys on this sub probably have some background in linguistics... but for me, when words sound different, i can't necessarily tell what the difference actually is... | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 23:58 | comment | added | Mitch | @epetorti They are examples of triples that are actual words in English (or names or interjections). But if you were pronouncing them wrong to begin with, the new ones won't help you to pronounce them correctly. You need to hear people actually say them (and have someone listen to you and correct). | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 23:55 | comment | added | epetorti | @Mitch yes that's kind of like the examples I was hoping someone could provide. So in your examples, I say the -en/-an pairs very differently, but the -an/-ang pairs very similarly. Thanks! | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 23:55 | comment | added | epetorti | @tchrist I got them from dictionary.reference.com. The sound bites there sound right when i hear them, so I assume they are correct. But I guess there may be regional differences (I'm not sure if dictionary.reference is us english or american english) | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 23:53 | comment | added | epetorti | @sumelic yes I'm a native speaker. I don't know very much linguistics, so the rest of what you say doesn't make heaps of sense to me. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 23:31 | comment | added | Mitch | 'pen', 'pan', 'pang'. 'Ben', 'ban', 'bang!'. 'den', 'Dan', 'dang!'. 'ten', 'tan', 'tang' | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 23:09 | comment | added | sumelic | @tchrist: This is true, but only for some dialects (you never mention that it doesn't apply to all of them). Historical /ɛŋ/ is uncommon, but does occur in some words (such as strength, length) and it is kept distinct from historical /æŋ/ in some dialects. For speakers with such a distinction, a minimal pair might be the name "Ang" (in "Ang Lee") and the IPA letter "eng." Using /e/ or /ɛ/ in fen is a notational choice; there are also some phonetic justifications for using the symbol /e/ when transcribing some dialects. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 22:59 | comment | added | tchrist | @fdb There’s a great deal of vowel neutralization before resonants: think merry–marry-Mary or pin–pen. In this case, the tense and lax phonemic distinction is completely neutralized before /ŋ/, so there are no minimal pairs for [æŋ], [ɛŋ], and [eŋ]. Those are all allophones and changing which one you say does not make it a different word. In North America, this is often [eŋ], but it is not a different word if you swap in one of the other two vowels. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 22:44 | comment | added | fdb | @tchrist. I have never heard "fang" pronounced as /feŋ/. In my (British) English "fan" and "fang" have the same vowel. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 22:38 | comment | added | tchrist | Those aren’t quite right. Only fan is what you have, /fæn/, like in ran or fancy. Fen is /fɛn/ like in wren or men, while fang is /feŋ/ like in rain or same. So they each have a different vowel. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 22:19 | history | asked | epetorti | CC BY-SA 3.0 |