Pillow/Pellow

[Mike]

How much does proper pronunciation matter? For example, suppose one person pronounces a word "pillow" like the vitamin pill you take at breakfast, and another pronounces it the same way but is informed by her family that in fact she is saying the word "pellow" even though she can clearly hear herself saying "pillow" because she too can hear herself speaking. Is this an issue worth discussing, and if so, how much time in a given day do you think such matters merit in the midst of life? What if the offender ALSO says words like "crick" and "ruff" instead of "creeeeek" and "rooooooof"?

First, I completely agree with Kyle's response to this. Language is constantly evolving. The ability to communicate information is what's most important.

Second, I was curious as to WHY pillow and milk are sometimes becoming pellow and melk. My initial guess was on the right track, because Google gave me this map of vowel sounds...

The "I" in pillow and the "E" in pellow are right above each other in the map. So they are pronounced in the same part of the mouth, with the only difference being that when you say the "E", your tongue is a little farther away from the roof of your mouth. So when you say the word pillow, your tongue starts pulled back to stay clear of the plosive "P", and then winds up high up against the teeth for the "L". Saying pillow requires not starting your vowel "I" until the tongue gets high enough. If it's a commonly used word, it will make sense that some people/dialects will start putting voice into the vowel before it is fully in position, which end up sounding more like "pellow".

In truth, I think most people who say pellow are using a vowel in between E and I. So to them, it sounds like pillow, but to those who still say pillow, the fact that the vowel is even a little off makes them hear pellow.

Just my best guess.

Similarly, when I was in Canada, I was expecting to hear a lot of "aboot"s but in reality it was really more like a-boat. And then I listen to the Pacific Northwest dialect, which I find fascinating, and it's a vowel smack in between about and a-boat. To them I'm sure they'll swear up and down they say about, but it's just off enough that it stands out to me every time.

I love stuff like this.

[Kyle]

Where did you find my chart? Wow- I haven't seen that since I submitted it with my masters thesis 20 years ago.

[Mike]

From a site called MyPellowGuy.

[Stan]

What I think is cool is that, as this beautiful chart shows, the vowel sounds are continuous but our minds draw lines to make categories. But the categories vary a bit by person, so Phoebe's category for i is different than her family's probably due to accents and stuff.

Color is weird that way too. There are colors that are definitely blue and ones that are definitely green but there are colors where some people say blue and some say green.

Many of the teachers at my son's daycare were Russian. For years, he said milk kinda like meelk.

[DMDarcs]

I definitely pronounce it like "melk", and I continually get chided for it. When talking with people I don't know well, I actually have to focus on the "ilk" pronunciation so I don't get made fun of mercilessly. I've maintained that there's a schwa in the pronunciation guide in the dictionary, but I don't know that it helps any.

[Mike]

I think I posted this somewhere else on the boards already, but it belongs here.

[Stan]

That was great

[Mike]

I love that video. The moment he hears it is priceless. But to be fair, even as the rest of his friends all say it, it's clear that they are using different vowels in each word, and I'm sure the difference is obvious to them, especially in context, but to an outsider who is unaccustomed to making those distinctions, they all seem to blend together. It's like listening to a tonal language, where the rising and falling of a sound creates different meanings. I can't tell the difference, because my ears have never been trained for it.

[Phoebe]

Good video, yes! I hear their different vowels pretty distinctly yet for a long time was incapable of understanding simple phrases spoken by people in south GA, AL, MS, coastal SC, etc. No idea whatsoever what English words they were saying.