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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Bingley-- you failed me! I was sure as i read the thread you would point out there is a actually a term for the process-- ( i have heard it, but it was a fleeting reference.)
there is a term for Adler becoming Alder, and Pretty becoming Pertty-- where a letter is transposed in pronounceation. Could it be a pertty effect? do you know the term? I think you must! if i have come across it in reading, you must have! Of course is I wrote from home, where i have a nice selection of reference books, in stead of from work....
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Helen, I am not the accomplishèd Bingley, but I think when letters are transposed, it is called a reversal.
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Carpal Tunnel
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gee, I thought that the transposition of letters was called a "transposition of lettres".  but seriously, there is a linguistic term that is used for the transposition of two phonemes (letters or sounds) in a word: [b/metathesis. examples of this are seen in the development of the word 'crud' from 'curd' and the (mis)pronunciation of 'pretty' as 'perty'! see also Anu's own entry on metathesis: http://wordsmith.org/awad/archives/0500
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Metathesis also explains why we have three and third rather than three and thrid.
Bingley
Bingley
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old hand
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Metathesis also explains why we have three and third rather than three and thrid.Ok, but we still have thread  - so why does metathesis strike in one place but not in another? I think we are onto something very subtle here. BTW, I always thought that phonemes were sound units (rendered in general by several letters) not just vowels or consonants. Each language has familiar and less familiar phonemes. So "adl" in English is an unfamiliar phoneme (it doesn't occur in any genuine word, to my knowledge), whereas e.g. "oodl" or "atl" are familiar ones, which would not be changed to "oold" or "alt".
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Carpal Tunnel
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I don't think anyone knows why metathesis or any other linguistic change occurs. The best we can do is to say with some precision what has happened, not why it happened.
A phoneme is indeed a sound unit. Change the phoneme and you have the possibility of changing the word. (For example in word change the phoneme /d/ to the phoneme /k/ and you get work instead of word.) But phonemes are not exactly the same as sounds because different languages divide up the possible sounds available into different phonemes. For example, /l/ and /r/ are different phonemes in English but the same phoneme in Japanese, hence their problems with River Valley Road. If you listen carefully, you will discover that the English /l/ is pronounced differently at the beginning and end of syllables. I'm told that in Welsh each of these realisations of the English phoneme (called allophones) is a different phoneme and can occur in any position.
I hope the above isn't too addled for you to understand. (Sorry wseiber, not a word non-native speakers are likely to come across very often.)
Bingley
Bingley
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I hope the above isn't too addled for you to understand.Not fair - - the sound in addled is not the same as that in Adler. Now, ad lib, b adly, s adly and others have the same (or nearly the same) sound values. But I don't think they're common. Of course, if you ignore the vowel sound and focus upon the consonants alone, you get some interesting ("swings both ways"?) combinations: baldly, boldly, wildly and the like. If we can pronounce those, then we can pronounce Adler.
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Pooh-Bah
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It sounds like the people who can't pronouce your name have never heard of the famous harmonica player. http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/ahc/exhibits/adler/or perhaps they pronounced his name wrong too!
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In reply to:
the sound in addled is not the same as that in Adler
True, but the difference, at least in my pronunciation, is not in the vowel but in the allophone of /l/ being used (a final "dark" /l/ rather than an initial "clear" /l/.
Bingley
Bingley
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OP
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Let me thank everyone, I have learned a lot. I am obviously in the company of experts and I hesitate to say anything. That being said, when I try to pronounce 'adl' I have to do a lot more with my tongue and mouth than when I try to pronounce 'ald'. I wonder if this could be a factor.
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