Exilian
Art, Writing, and Learning: The Clerisy Quarter => History, Science, and Interesting Information - The Great Library => Topic started by: Glaurung on March 30, 2018, 08:46:46 PM
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A random lingustics thought, brought on by the last couple of posts (https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=158.msg118839#msg118839) in the Word Association thread - all the following words rhyme in English, or at least my personal version of it:
beer, bier, cheer, dear, deer, ear, fear, gear, hear, here, jeer, leer, mere (both meanings), near, peer, pier, queer, rear, sear, seer, tear (from the eye), tier, veer, weir, year
Meanwhile, these other ones also rhyme, but not with the previous batch, despite the sometimes shared 'ear' or 'ere' spelling:
air, bare, bear, care, chair, dare, fair, fare, hair, lair, mare, pare, pear, rare, tare, tear (fabric or paper), there, wear
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Uhm, yes... Where are you going with this?
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Just an observation, really: I'm slightly bored on a Friday evening, and it hadn't previously occurred to me how many words rhyme like this.
If people felt like it, they could comment about the perversity of English spelling (at least four different ways to spell one common sound), or the fact that speakers of other English dialects or variants might group these words differently.
I might throw in other random linguistics as they occur to me in future, and the thread is now available for anyone else who wants to do the same.
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Ah, okay, Friday musings, now I understand... I got confused for a bit and thought I missed something... :)
Sounds interesting... :)
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Well, where I come from just about all the words in the OP rhyme perfectly consistently :)
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Norfolk dialect did cross my mind a bit later on last night, at which point I resorted to the inevitable "Communicating with a Norfolk Accent" YouTube video:
More seriously, what about bier, pier, tier? Do they sound the same as bare, pare, tare?
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I think they sound a bit different - if I recall rightly you can hear in the Norfolk pronunciation of pier that it's an i as the second letter, so it sounds like the usual pronunciation of "beer" more than "bear" - but they're certainly spoken in a similarly monosyllabic way.
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Judging from my homework in front of me, bier, pier and tier all contain the diphthong /ıə/, whereas bare, pare and tare contain /eə/, so not the same sound, but there is variation within the countless English varieties, and I cannot possibly account for all of them... :)
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Yes, Norfolk pronunciation is quite different to RP, which is presumably what you're studying (for example "beer" and "bare" are both pronounced the same as "bear", and "coup", "cow", and "queue" are all basically just said as "coo") - I recommend listening to the video Mark linked, if I've never shown it to you before!
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I know, because you have actually... :) I do remember it being hilarious... :)
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Haha we all need to make a sound byte saying that phrase. Dear/deer would be a problem here as we pronounce both we a long eee sound.
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I think I pronounce deer and dear pretty much the same in my normal accent. In the Norfolk accent they both rhyme with "dare" as well though.
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Isn't language fun? :P
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Language fun isn't. :P
@Jub and then our dare is different because we actually pronounce the letter r lol
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I know, I got to a point yesterday when I was ready to throw either my homework or myself out of the window... -.- (no papers or humans were harmed though, I went out into our garden...)
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While I've got it to hand, here's a genuine example of the Norfolk accent that was lampooned in the video I posted two years. A Mr Green, of the village of Stiffkey (inevitably for Norfolk pronounced something like "Stewkey"), interviewed for local television in 1959, by a chap with a very RP accent.
Here's the Facebook post (https://www.facebook.com/groups/208021442566146/permalink/3286485491386377/) that explains a bit more about it.
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Goodness that is tough to understand.
This man could well have been the inspiration for that incomprehensible fellow in hot fuzz
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Pleasantly, I can understand most of it fine :) Some bits at the end are a bit trickier.
And yes - Norfolk and the West Country have somewhat similar accents, though Norfolk is much softer on its consonants.
At the moment I'm playing a Very Norfolk cleric in the D&D game I'm playing in and doing the accent, it's very good fun.