Thoughts
The thing I hate about linguistics is not it’s so clearly analog. And the linguists like to be all ‘do you use a schwa or not’ and I’m like,
“I actually invented a new sound that is 5/18th between a schwa and an a sound for this word.” They’re like ‘English is imprecise because the same letter can be pronounced in different ways so we use IPA’ and I’m like “I can pronounce a given IPA symbol different ways depending on the context”
I don’t know, I think I’ve been rage baited by a tiktoker going “if you’re a native English speaker you’ve never pronounced ‘tr’ in your life you always convert it to ‘ch’.” And I think it’s interesting that the “tr” sound isn’t enunciated and drifts towards a “ch” but to say that it IS ALWAYS IDENTICAL to a “ch” just seems blatantly and demonstrably false. “Um, actually, there’s no nuance in the way that people pronounce things ever” is just such an absolutely insane take. I did five years of speech therapy as a kid because I don’t talk normally, but sure, continue telling me how I pronounce things because I’m “a native English speaker” as if that’s a coherent homogenous category.
Why does linguistics, a field that should be about the DIFFERENCES between ways of speaking, devolve into labeling and categorization and prescription so quickly. ‘Oh this person is from Milwaukee so they speak with an Inland North American accent.’
=> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Northern_American_English
‘Here’s a chart of how they make all of the vowel sounds. If you’re from Milwaukee and you think you pronounce something differently than shown on this chart, for example by using a different part of your mouth depending on the context of the word, no you don’t, I’m a linguist, you’re wrong, you’re just enunciating it now because you’re thinking about it’
You can hear him say “trouble” with a “tr” sound in the video where he’s explaining how native English speakers never use a “tr” sound. Part of the point that he’s trying to make is that it’s different from if you made a t sound and then a r sound, but that’s not what he says. What he says is that everyone always makes a “ch” sound instead.
When I make a t sound my tongue touches my teeth. When I make a tr sound my tongue touches the roof of my mouth significantly behind my teeth. When I make a ch sound my tongue doesn’t touch the roof of my mouth at all. He ends the video by saying “when I tell native English speakers this they don’t believe me” and doesn’t consider for a second that it’s because he’s either wrong or bad at communicating.
I have to consider that he is just fully rage baiting engagement farming. It’s fully possible that I’m getting so successfully trolled right now.