Sammy (friend of foxes)Feb 21, 2023

Very smart #linguistics folx, your attention please 🙏

Given the #IPA həˈləʊ, is there or is there not only "one way" of that being pronounced?
If so, by extension, correct in assuming the phoneme ə can again only be "pronounced" one way?

Why then does the ə on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/General_phonetics#Vowels not sound like the ə in the word hello (represented as həˈləʊ)???

General phonetics - Wikimedia Commons

Show thread9th level spell slutFeb 21, 2023
@theresnotime only a dabbler, but "hello" has two pronunciations common in English use: that one, and /hɛˈləʊ/ (which is what I assume yours is)
Show threadSammy (friend of foxes)Feb 21, 2023
@hierarchon okay but /hɛˈləʊ/ then should, per the Laws Of IPA (/s) should the same in any language right? IPA is language agnostic right..?
Show thread9th level spell slutFeb 21, 2023
@theresnotime same-ish, yeah. there's something about phonemes and phones that I don't fully get
Show threadOwen Blacker

@hierarchon @theresnotime The short version is that we use some symbols nonspecifically when the difference between accents is unimportant.

So /e/ in English might actually be /ɛ/, for example, but English doesn't really differentiate between the two sounds. Similarly we don't bother writing the difference between the /pʰ/ and the /p/ in "pepper", because that difference isn't phonemically important, whereas that matters in, say, Hindi (फ and प, respectively)

Feb 21, 2023 at 11:00pmWeb
Show threadOwen BlackerFeb 21, 2023
@hierarchon @theresnotime (I didn't scroll far enough to see the other, much better answers. Sorry about that.)