In the sentence “it’s a used car,” I pronounce “used” yoozed.
But in the sentence “I’m used to the cold,” I pronounce it yoost.
I’ve never before noticed that the pronunciation varies according to which definition of the word I’m using. Are there any other English words like that?
Yes, actually. There’s a similar contrast between two uses of have; compare “I have [hæv] a used car” with “I have [hæf] to use the car.” (Or, in the third person, “She has [hæz] a used car” vs. “She has [hæs] to use the car.”)
The generalization seems to be that you get the versions with voiceless consonants [t, f, s] in senses that are nearly always used immediately before to; note also that a third sense of use does this in sentences like “She used to have a car.” On the other hand, this generalization doesn’t quite work for the past tense of have: “I had [hæd] to use the car” can be pronounced “I had [hæt] to use the car,” but it doesn’t hafta be.
In French, the modified pronunciation is more obvious. The article “les” is pronounced differently in the following two cases
“Les alpes” and “les femmes”. I was once in the presence of two French friends who argued over the correct way to pronounce “les haricot vertes”. The issue was: is the “h” aspirated, or not. The English speaking ears, it seemed not. However, both French men assured me that they could hear the difference between each others pronunciation of the “h”. (Or non-pronunciation.)
When I say the word wasn’t, it sounds like “wasn’t”. When I saw the wasn’t and try to impersonate President Bush at the first presidential debate, it sounds like “wud-n’t”.
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The voiceless consonants may well just be assimilating to the voiceless [t] in hafta kind of words.
Many words change stress if they’re nouns or verbs. And (for me) the vowel in route depends on that, too: I take such and such [rut] but I [rawt] things one way or another.
I’d be suspicious of what people claim they can hear in their language: many Russians claim they can hear the difference in /t/ and /d/ at the end of a word, but they can’t (they guess at 50% on new words, etc).
I’d be suspicious of what people claim they can hear in their language:
I was suspicious! But, I didn’t think there was much point in insisting they couldn’t possibly hear a difference if I couldn’t.
There are some distinct French vowel sounds I *know* I have difficulty differentiating and I know the French have no trouble at all. (These are in vowels all of which sound sort of sort of like “oo” as in “moon” to me! Yeah.. I can hear some differences sometimes, if I try really, really hard…. ) My deafness to the differences contribute to my fairly typical American accent when speaking French. (And, the other Americans have a similar difficulty.)
Wolfangel wrote: The voiceless consonants may well just be assimilating to the voiceless [t] in hafta kind of words.
Seems to be, but it’s definitely not purely phonological: contrast “She has [hæz] two cars” with “She has [hæs] to use the car.” So it’s not just the voicelessness of the [t] at the beginning of to that’s doing it. I would say it has something to do with the pseudo-modal status of hafta and useta, but that doesn’t account for the ‘accustomed’ sense of use (as in Amp’s example, “I’m used to the cold”), where the following to is the preposition rather than the infinitive marker.
Pheevr, I am a little unclear about your use of æ – I’m fairly sure you’re not using it to indicate the Nordic æ sound.
If you are, and your pronouciation guidelines are right, I can state that I have really been mispronouncing have, had and has in all usuages.
No, it’s not just assimilation to the next word, clearly. I suspect that it is something like “hafta” and “useta” being, as we’re writing them, single (phonological) words, where this assimilation does happen (as opposed to across word boundaries). The voicelessness is crucial.
Note that Amp said he had a voiceless t at the end of used in “used to something” constructions. (I think I tend not to pronounce the -d, but I’m not sure. I think I similarly do not pronounce the -d at the end of past tense have, if it’s before “to” — I think I just have one big flap.)
To seems to be close to obligatory in these situations, which is probably why.
Kristjan – I’m using the symbol æ with roughly the value it has in the IPA, to represent the English low front unrounded vowel. I think the vowel in question is pretty close to the vowel that’s spelled with this symbol in Swedish, a bit lower than a Danish æ, and nothing at all like an Icelandic æ. Anyway, it’s whatever vowel you hear English speakers saying in the word have.
Wolfangel – Yeah, I think you’re right; useta and hafta do seem to behave like single phonological words.
useta, hafta… don’t forget gotta Or in some parts of the country ,godda.
I’m constantly on the search for examples of glottal stops, and frequently find myself singing the Batman theme song just to get the full effect.
Oops–in the post above, I meant the Swedish vowel that’s spelled with ä. English [æ] is similar to the ä in här, but lower than the ä in rätt.
Pheevr, æ and ä are the same letters – or is at least traditionally thought so in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. But thank you for your explanaition.
Q. Pheevr beat me to the best example.
Another good one is that, in English, a lot of little words (“a”, “the”, “and”, “you”, “them”, etc.) have stressed and unstressed pronunciations.
Also, stress can vary quite a bit. The way you’d stress a word on its own isn’t the same as the way you’d stress a word in combination with others. We like to keep our stresses at regular distances apart in English, and we’re not squeamish about moving them around to accomplish this.