Just a request...

[biancasablancas.livejournal.com]

... so don't take this as a criticism. "ahn" and "on" are *not* the same thing when doing phonetic spellings except if you are American, and perhaps Canadian (I'm not sure). It took me ages to figure out why people were saying names ending in an 'ahna' sound were being written out as 'o-na'. I'd just like to put it out there seeing as we have posters from all over the world. I know it confused me and I'm probably not the only one. A lot of English speakers use very short 'o's, which sound absolutely nothing like 'ah.' So, next time when doing phonetic spellings I would just like to request that you take this into consideration. Thanks guys.

If this kind of post is not allowed feel free to remove it.

Comments

[sageharper.livejournal.com]

Well until everyone in the world learns an international phoentic alphabet and can transcribe it then that's a pretty unrealistic request.

Plenty of people could level equal complaints at how I would transcribe something, indeed that has occured. I can't know or remember every detail of dialects other than my own to be able to make concessions for it (must I also use American English, to cater to that majority?). So couldn't reasonably expect that of everyone else.

It doesn't even bother me to see those diffrences (until people start splitting hairs, then discussions can get fuitless and petty). No one can gave a definitive answer on pronouciation because as you've noticed accents vary. So take any suggestions as a rough approximation and don't loose any sleep over it.

[biancasablancas.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying to cater for every type of difference there is but I see this particular difference arise often. I'm not too stressed about it seeing as I figured out what people meant a while ago, perhaps 'request' was not the word to use. Sorry if you took my post the wrong way.

[sageharper.livejournal.com]

Hmm yeah that makes sense, fair enough.
Nah it's fine, I didn't mean to be harsh.

[biancasablancas.livejournal.com]

p.s. are you Australian or British, or something else, just out of curiosity?

[sageharper.livejournal.com]

British, from way down southern England (the ones who sound like Hugh Grant ;)).

[pythianlegume7.livejournal.com]

could you give an example? I have no idea what you're trying to say here.

[biancasablancas.livejournal.com]

see my reply to storm queen

[matika88.livejournal.com]

I am american and 'ahn' and 'on' would not sound the same for me.. I don't get what you're really saying.

[biancasablancas.livejournal.com]

yeah, it was kind of a generalisation as there are many different 'American' accents. I appreciate that, I've spent time travelling around the US, but I didn't want to dwell on that. What area of the US are you from? I love different accents and everything, I'd love to study linguistics - I'm not trying to tell everyone to speak the same way.

[stormqueen280.livejournal.com]

Examples, please, 'cause I'm pretty much at a loss here.

[biancasablancas.livejournal.com]

Like in the other thread, someone was talking about the name Livana, with the second 'a' being long and wrote it as liv-on-a. to me that is not the same sound as liv-ahn-a. It's really hard to describe what I'm trying to say in writing, it'd be way easier if I could explain it out loud.

[0o-faerie.livejournal.com]

Phonetical spellings are hard, exactly for the reason you mentioned: people from different countries (or different regions, even!) pronounce things very differently.

I actually agree with you; 'on' and 'ahn' are completely different to me as well, but I can usually just guess what pronunciation they mean. Sometimes 'on' just doesn't make any sense!