The word 'pool' is driving me potty!

[18yearstooold]

Trying to identify alternatives to /ue/ in a list of words

I have a stupid accent and when I say pool it is neither an /u/ or an /oo/

Gah!!!!!

how would you represent the sound /y/ if you wanted to write the word new?

If u chose to use the most common spelling used in endings, it would be 'nue', but 'nyoo' would be legible too.

The phonetic alphabet was invented mainly to deal with the unreliable sounds of English letters such as y (funny, supply, cycle, cyclical, yes, bye, ).

Re u/you/yoo/ /ewe/yew, I tried to explain earlier that the main spellings for the /ue/u/yoo/ sound are 'u-e' (or open u) and 'ue':
e.g. use, muse, music, refuse, refusal, confuse, confusion, unit, cute, duty, reduce, salute ....cue, due, argue, avenue....

In the stem of words the open u spelling is fairly dominant, in at least 137 words, with just 26 exceptions:
eucalyptus, ewer, feud, feudal, jewel, lewd, neutral, newt, nuclear, beauty, nuisance, pewter, pneumatic, pseudo, rheumatism,
sewage, steward, suicide, suitable, suitcase, juice, Tuesday,
you/ewe/yew, youth.

In endings the spellings for /yoo/ are less predictable.
At the end of longer words it is mainly -ue (argue, avenue, barbecue - in 16 words)
but also askew, curfew, curlew, mildew, nephew.
In shorter words mainly -ew (chew, few, Jew, new/knew, per, spew, stew, view (review, interview).

• due/dew, cue/queue.

Masha you seem to have misunderstood my question ... I didn't ask how you would represent the /yoo/ sound I asked how you would represent only the /y/ within the word new.

Not sure what you're after there, why would I as a literate adult spell it other than new?
DD would if she was able to write probably spell it nyoo.

What I'm saying is the way it is segmented seems to be purely down to knowing how it's spelled and not a function of the spoken language here. You can't have a sound that's phonetically the same and in some words is an unsegmentable diphthong, in other words splits into two. Can you? Whatever phonics is about, phonetics at least is just about the sounds.

masha, is that really true that the IPA was invented for English? I thought it was more about comparing the sounds used in different languages. Hence "International"?

maizie, sounds like an eminently sensible place to be when the phonics discussions kick off

I'm not asking you how to spell new ( obviously you know how) but how you would segment it into the 3 sounds identified /n/ /y/ /oo/

And no it isn't true that IPAD was invented for English

IPA

How can I say which of the alternative correspondences would be used in a hypothetical different segmentation of a word? I'm not the one claiming the segmentation exists independently of written language here. I would segment it n/ew, but that's because I know its spelling units are split that way.

I suppose if you insist a plausible alternative spelling might be niew (to rhyme with view) with the i making the y sound and ew making oo.

You/unit is maybe a better comparison as the /ju:/ sound is placed at the beginning in both cases.

What have I started?

@18yearstooold.

It's called an interesting discussion!

There isn't an alternative representation Catkind in English represents the sound /y/

I would say the difference is that you is a word whereas /yoo/ is segment of a word but that's just MHO

So spell it nyoo then if you want. I'm interested in how it's segmented, not really in how it's spelled.

I notice that Debbie Hepplewhite's alphabetic code charts notate /yoo/ as /y+oo/ in the same way as x represents /k+s/, and describes these as two sounds. That would make more sense to me.

alphabeticcodecharts.com/B1_DH%20Alph%20Code%20overview%20with%20teaching%20points%20colour.pdf

/yoo/ is sort of hovering between semivowel-vowel and diphthong, maybe that's the problem here.

I don't want to spell it nyoo thanks ... I'm more than happy with new/knew.

The discussion is highlighting the differences between phonics and phonetics and the limitations of a 26 letter alphabet to represent every speech sound.

It's not really coming down to phonics/phonetics differences though is it? You're saying the same sound is both phonically and phonetically indivisible sometimes (you said it was a diphthong, and that diphthongs are phonetically unsegmentable), but phonically and presumably therefore also phonetically divisible at other times.

At least, I've offered several opportunities for you to say you hear them as different sounds, and you don't seem to be taking me up on that.

I've never claimed to hear them as different sounds catkind although I would probably put slightly less emphasis on /yoo/ in new because it's preceded by the /n/.
I do disagree with you point about phonics and phonetics

Just checking.

Which part do you disagree with? It was largely quoting your posts. The only bit I think I added was the deduction that if something is phonically divisible then it's also phonetically divisible, do you disagree with that bit?

I think it is down to the difference between phonics and phonetics. There is only one way to correctly represent the sounds in the word new but if I were transcribing the spoken word it could be correctly represented in different ways depending on pronunciation.

Which is fine, as long as you don't insist that phonemes are minimal units of sound and the division of words into phonemes is determined by the spoken language independent of the written language. That's what I was questioning. Because I've yet to find anything in the spoken language that stops you subdividing into phonemes differently and spelling new as nyoo, or unit as younit.

It seems to me that the fine detail of the subdivision into phonemes is more of a spelling convention than a facet of the spoken language. But it's hard to tell - for those of us who are already literate, it's hard to separate written and spoken language. That's why I thought it interesting that DD who doesn't know any spelling conventions naturally subdivides sounds into finer units than phonemes at times (e.g. /ew/ as /y//oo/, but also other diphthongs).

A phoneme is generally accepted as the smallest unit of sound that determines meaning. It is important to remember that phonemes are primarily units of sound, independent of letters (which are used to represent the sounds in writing without a necessary one to one relationship).

In phonetics a phone is the smallest identifiable unit found in speech that is able to be tea scribes using IPA symbols.

Catkind, Re IPA.

Isaac Pitman (inventor of shorthand and also i.t.a.) invented it originally purely as a means of writing English in an unambiguous way, because of the variable sounds of many English graphemes. It is still used mainly as a pronunciation guide by L2 learners of English, although by comparative linguist in academia too. It has undergone a few changes.

Acc. to Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_International_Phonetic_Alphabet :

"The International Phonetic Alphabet was created soon after the International Phonetic Association was established in the late 19th century. It was intended as an international system of phonetic transcription for oral languages, originally for pedagogical purposes. The association was established in Paris in 1886 by French and British language teachers led by Paul Passy. The first published alphabet appears in Passy (1888). The association based their alphabet upon the Romic alphabet of Henry Sweet (1880 or 1881–1971), which in turn was based on the Phonotypic Alphabet of Isaac Pitman and Palæotype of Alexander John Ellis [1]"

The first 'international' version was simply to help the French learn English.

Your interpretation of written English is so weird, marsha, that it really does cause one to question just how accurate your 'research' really is.

Just because the IPA was established by French & English language teachers it doesn't necessarily mean that they were the only languages that were transcribed in it. And the alphabets on which it was based were alphabets invented to provide a one to one correspondence for each phoneme; they could be used with any language containing the same phonemes as English. It was the IPA which expanded to include representations of all known phonemes in order to facilitate ease of understanding of transcriptions of any languages by linguists and phoneticians (is that the word or are they phoneticists?).

English graphemes have no sounds; they are completely silent- try putting your ear to one and seeing if it makes any sound...

I actually think that catkind seems pretty well informed about the IPA

Re mrz - yes, that confirms what you were saying earlier.

What I'm not seeing, either on the phonics side or the phonetics side of that, is how your definitions allow a "smallest unit of sound" that is a smallest unit in some words, but can be split into two smaller units in other words. Which is what you seem to be claiming /yoo/ is.

Phonetically you have said it is split /j/ /u:/, but you have also said it is a diphthong and that diphthongs are unsegmentable.

Phonically you have said it is a phoneme in /u/nit or n/ew/, but two phonemes in /you/.

How do you reconcile that? What stops it being split when it "can't" be split according to you? My DD seems to think it can be split wherever it occurs and I find that hard to argue with.

If it makes you happy catkind we could adopt you as a unique spelling of the sound /yoo/

Specially for me? I'm touched.