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#6668 12/18/00 07:17 PM
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>There are no other normal words in English containing -eng-

I challenge that with a vengeance; what about penguin?


#6669 12/19/00 04:49 AM
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NicholasW: There are no other normal words in English containing -eng-

Tsuwm: I challenge that with a vengeance; what about penguin?

Tsuwm, I think Nicholas was talking about words coming to us from Old English (aka Anglo-Saxon), while your examples are later imports.



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#6670 12/19/00 09:24 AM
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The original poster showed their NZ origin by saying a stressed /i/ as in England could be a schwa.

As to unstressed /i/, this depends on dialect. A word like 'indivisibility' consists of all the one vowel in RP, and in modern southern British only the final vowel is different (a short form of the [ i] in 'seat'); but in most accents the unstressed vowels are neutralized.


#6671 12/19/00 09:55 AM
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NicholasW said: The original poster showed their NZ origin by saying a stressed /i/ as in England could be a schwa.

I'm no linguist but I if you listen carefully, the "E" is not only unstressed, but it disappears. (I always thought that "schwa" applied to a whole syllable, by the way, not the way one letter of it was pronounced. I stand corrected).

The average New Zealander actually pronounces it "Ngland" and kills the "E" stone dead. Funnily enough, I can't think of any other word which suffers this fate. "Angle", for instance has the "a" stressed, not removed.

It may have something to do with the prevalence of the Maori "nga" structure, but since that is pronounced "ngaaa", probably not.



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#6672 12/19/00 11:01 AM
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(On England becoming Ngland in NZ) More likely to be a general feature of English, once the e had become schwa: that is, that schwa + sonorant is usually realized as syllabic sonorant. 'garden' is /ga:d@n/ or /ga:dn-/ where /n-/ represents the syllabic nasal.


#6673 12/19/00 11:09 AM
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NicholasW: There are no other normal words in English containing -eng-

Tsuwm: I challenge that with a vengeance; what about penguin?

Tsuwm, I think Nicholas was talking about words coming to us from Old English (aka Anglo-Saxon), while your examples are later imports.

1. NickW quoted penguin as a 'modern' import

2. How long have length and strength (lingth and stringth?!)been around in English?






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