Goodness! It's our lucky thirteenth episode, and Phil and Eric tackle the  /ʊ/ vowel and the lexical set foot.  We talk about symbols used to represent it in phonetic notation, spellings of the sound, the history of the sound, splits and mergers in various accents of English, and interesting "goodies" about the sound represented by upsilon .

Show Notes:

Description

“short oo”

near-close near-back rounded vowel

Formation

Do it like this: [slide between /u/ and schwa?] Handbook of the IPA defines this as a 'mid-centralization of /u/'.

Phonetic Symbol

Turned omega ʊ [wiki: "horseshoe u"]

closed omega ɷ  was voted off the island in1989 called 

“In Americanist phonetic notation, the symbol [ᴜ] (a small capital U) is used”  ---   -Wikipedia

After Jones: /u/  /u:/  Phil feel that this confuses quality and quantity but it has continued as the practice in the UK for a long time

[Therefore: /ʊ/ is not a Cardinal Vowel]

• Vowel Reduction of /u/, especially /ju/ as in stimulus vs. stimulate

Occurrence (from Wikipedia)

In the following transcriptions, an unrounded vowel is represented by the "less-rounded" diacritic [ʊ̜]:

LanguageWordIPAMeaningNotes

Arabicكتب[ˈkʊtʊb]'books'See Arabic phonology

ChineseCantonese紅[hʊ̜ŋ]'red'See Cantonese phonology

Mandarin紅[xʊ̜ŋ˧˥]'red'May be only slightly rounded. See Mandarin phonology

Englishhook[hʊk]'hook'May be only slightly rounded. See English phonology

Faroesehvalur[kvɛalʊɹ]'whale'

FrenchQuebecfoule[fʊl]'crowd'See French phonology

GermanSchutz[ʃʊts]'protection'See German phonology

Mongolian[1]өлгий[ʊɮɣiː]'cradle'

PortugueseEuropean[2]pegar[pʊ̜ˈɡaɾ]'to hold'Unstressed vowel. See Portuguese phonology

Brazilian[3]saco[ˈsakʊ]'bag'

Russian[4]сухой[sʊˈxo̞j]'dry'Unstressed allophone of /u/. See Russian phonology

Swedishort

[ʊʈ] (help·info)'(geographic) place'Exolabial (compressed). See Swedish phonology

Vietnamesethu[tʰʊw]'autumn'See Vietnamese phonology

History of English Spelling and Development of pronunciation

foot O.E. fot c.1300

put O.E. putung c.1300

puss O.E.  1530

bush O.E. bysc

full O.E. full

pudding O.E. puduc c.1300

bull  O.E. bula

good  O.E. god

stood  O.E. stod  c.1300

wood  O.E. wudu

hood O.E. hod

hook O.E. hoc

hoof O.E. hof

cook  O.E. coc

nook  noke  c.1300

rook  O.E. hroc   (crow)

look  O.E. locian

wool O.E. wull

wolf  O.E. wulf

roof O.E. hrof

soot O.E. sot

bosom O.E. bosm

could O.E. cuðe pt. of cunnan

should O.E. sceolde  c.1200

would O.E. wolde

shook  O.E. sceacan (scoc)

push  O.Fr.  poulser  c.1300

cuckoo O.Fr. cucu  c.1240

butcher O.Fr  boucher  c.1300

cushion O.Fr. coissin  c.1300

rook  O.Fr. roc  c.1300  (chess piece)

sugar O.Fr. sucre c.1289

bullet M.Fr. boulette  1550s

woman late O.E wifman

root  late O.E. rot

jook Gullah  joog 1937 (wicked, disorderly)

took late O.E. toc

Buddha Pali  budh 1680s  related to Skt. bodhati

Muslim Arabic muslim 1615

Jack Windsor Lewis:

•This is usually spelt u or oo but corresponds to the spelling o only in bosom, wolf, woman and worsted. Cf courier / `kʊriə/ and the place name Worcester.  The suffix -ful has this vowel in nouns eg boxful, mouthful, spoonful but not in adjectives eg useful, beautiful, hopeful which instead have either /ə/ or more usually no vowel.

1. •Elisions due to speeded articulation from increased familiarity: actually/-ʧʊəli→-ʧəli/ , manufacture /-njʊf→nəf-/ , particularly /-kjʊləli→/-kjəli//,   usually /`juːʒʊəli→/`juːʒli/
   

• The beginning of /ʊɚ/ &  the end of /aʊ/ /oʊ/ diphthongs

Mergers and Splits

foot/strut Historic split. Some areas don’t do this split

foot/goose Scottish merger (realization may be fronter)

foot/nurse Not really a merger, but in many US accents midcentralization and unrounding bring the two closer.

 

“cook” /u/ in Ireland and North England  - According to Wells

Post vocalic /l/ can “reverse”  the foot/strut merger, making “culture” into [kʊlʧɚ]

Sultan – vulnerable – culture – culture – multi - 

Ashton Kutcher: /u/ or /ʊ/?

Some plurals reverse the vowel shift, moving from /ʊ/ to /u/

hoof/hooves  roof/rooves?

“jukebox “This is a  newishword which reversed the shift/ʊ/ to /u/

oops  whoops zhoozh