IPA: Is It Possible to Have Primary-Stressed Vowels In An English Word?

"There is no agreed phonetic definition of a syllable" -- Ladefoged (1982, p219)
Image from Peter Ladefoged's homepage

"There is no agreed phonetic definition of a syllable" -- Ladefoged (1982, p219)

Last year, one of my students who happens to be an IPA teacher with a Master's degree in  Translation, spotted something pretty interesting when I was introducing the word "masseur".

Image from Cambridge Dictionary Online

She argued that the stress mark should be before the /s/ not after it, according to the rules she has learnt. She suspected that this is a typo made by Cambridge University.

To my knowledge, having a primary stress on a vowel alone is not unusual at all, according to my hundreds of hours of blog-writing (thus my exploitation of the Cambridge Dictionary Online), but at that moment, I couldn't come up with a counter-example. She was convinced with what she knew and stressed that by telling me she was an IPA teacher, and I was also sure with what I know, and so she challenged me to find another example on the Cambridge Dictionary Online, or if the same word "masseur" shows up with the same IPA. Subsequently, the situation got worse and I even received a complaint from her through my boss. My ex-boss, who is a fervent supporter of the Oxford Dictionary, was on her side and instructed me never to teach IPA in class again because "you are wrong!" I found no point of arguing with her and also pointless to even think about educating her, and so I pretended to have accepted her view.

Why should I make her smarter if they insist that they are smarter, right?

But am I really wrong? Of course not, not in this case. What they do not know is the most fundamental concepts of pronunciation.

Now that things have cooled down, I can explain the logic and reasons behind.

Notice the difference in IPA for the same word by different dictionaries
Image from Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

Now, here's something we must know. If we check different authoritative dictionaries, we are bound to get many different IPA representations for the same word. How's that possible?

The answer is both political and commonsensical. 

It is political because of the way these dictionary authorities, such as Cambridge, Oxford, BBC, Colins, Longman, Webster, Merriam-Webster, etc., they are not friends and they don't share their researches. Sponsors or funded money is spent on top-secret data collections, data processing and computer programs. 

It is also commonsensical since they basically use different algorithms to work on different lexico-grammatical and phonological data collected from different regions of the world, few, if any, of the linguistic features such as IPA, grammar, meanings, translations will be the same. Why would it be the same anyway if there is something called copyright and patent infringement? Just ask Apple Inc. about copyrights and patents! 

What's more, I believe that there is in fact no 100% foolproof rule to anything on this planet. I used to believe that there is something that is absolutely right and absolutely wrong when I was a kid, just to realise that there are something called grey areas eventually. 

When a theory or a rule is wrong, people set a new boundary and then set a new rule, and the new rule remains correct until someone disproves it. The subject of science works exactly this way. Remember that our Earth was once believe to be a cube and travelling too far off the ships would fall off the edge of the world?

Let's not forget, we are dealing with English, a language which has borrowed, devoured, digested and "stolen" from over 350 languages around the world since 450 AD, sometimes, or most of the time, which English word belongs to which language is a tough task to trace. Then how can one IPA rule bound every word in the English language? Quite impossible.

Anyway, I find this question really challenging and here's what I've found!

Images from Cambridge Dictionary Online

All of them, with the exception of "batik" which is from Dutch, are from French.


Could this primary-stressed vowel pattern mainly happens in French loanwords? I doubt it. Dutch, in particular, is well-known for their stressed vowels. 

Could this primary-stressed vowel pattern only appears in Cambridge Dictionary Online? Not sure, but I checked every one of these words in the Oxford Dictionaries, and none of them shows this pattern.

Images from Oxford Dictionary Online

Anyway, I would very much like a clarification on that from the Cambridge University Press to make my student happy, so I wrote Cambridge University Press an email at 1:45am (now it's 2:33am, 26th July 2013), the response that I received was, they will follow up, and they never did.

That being said, you can try searching words like "ergo", "earnings", "urgent", "also", always", "pronunciation" and see the same pattern of primary-stressed vowel.

Back to my point, I believe that there is hardly any rules which can always be true (this is something I have learnt from Dr. House), pronunciation models are forever changing as humans evolve, what the quote from Ladefoged back in 1982 at the beginning of this post is very much still valid today, even with the advance technology that we possess right now. Syllabification, the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken or written, is a complex topic in linguistics study and like everything academic, it is heavily argued and debated.

I must say I do not know everything, but you do not need to be a genius to know that nothing is true forever.

So, as common learners of English, whether you belong to the ESL, EFL, ESP or EAP group, when learning IPA, I have one advice -- don't be too rigid.

"Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water." -- Bruce Lee

The Analysis of French Schwa
Image from Jstor

Image from Wiktionary

For more articles on IPA, do visit my IPA page.

Vocabulary:

masseur -- (n)[C] a person whose job it is to give massages to people

typo -- (n)[C] informal a small mistake in a text made when it was typed or printed
fervent (also fervid) formal-- (adj) describes beliefs that are strongly and sincerely felt or people who have strong and sincere beliefs

authoritative -- (adj) containing complete and accurate information , and therefore respected

commonsensical -- (adj) the basic level of practical knowledge and judgement that we all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way

bound to do sth-- certain to do something; destined to do something.

foolproof -- (adj) (of a plan or machine ) so simple and easy to understand that it is unable to go wrong or be used wrongly

devour -- (vb)[T] to eat something eagerly and in large amounts so that nothing is left

trace -- (vb)[T] to find the origin of something
syllabification or syllabication -- (n)[U] the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken or written.

Resources:

IPA @ Locky's English Playground
http://lockyep.blogspot.hk/search/label/IPA

IPA & Website: Peter Ladefoged's IPA Home Page @ Locky's English Playground
http://lockyep.blogspot.hk/2010/10/ipa-website-peter-ladefogeds-ipa-home.html

The History of English in 10 Minutes @ YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3r9bOkYW9s

http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/diana/papers/Chapter_2_Grammatical_vs_Lexical_Stress.pdf

Stress @ Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_(linguistics)

The Analysis of French Shwa : Or, How to Get Something For Nothing? @ Jstor
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/413848?uid=3738176&uid=2134&uid=367753221&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=367753211&uid=60&sid=21101650914611

Whatever happened to Received Pronunciation? J.C. Wells, UCL
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4a7c82560101nvlj.html

Ladefoged, P. 1982. A Course in Phonetics (2nd ed.). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Syllabification @ Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabification

Phonetic cues to syllabification
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2497n8jq#page-112


http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/masseur?q=masseur
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/masseur#French
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/bound+to+do
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/foolproof?q=foolproof+
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/devour?q=devour+
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/trace_1?q=trace+
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/trace_1?q=trace+
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/common-sense?q=commonsensical+
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/fervent?q=fervent
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/authoritative?q=authoritative+
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/typo?q=typo

Cooking & Food: Battle Of The Udon -- Stage 3

Can anyone of the 4 udons dethrone the mighty ACE Sanuki Udon?
Image from Locky's English Playground

Surely, one will easily get hungry when watching soccer past midnight (HK time), getting sick of instant noodles? Maybe it is time for some "udoniousness", so back is our Cooking & Food: Battle Of The Udon -- Stage 3

First, a quick reminder the results from Stage 2:

Results from Stage 2 (Left to Rigth) ACE Sanuki Udon, ACE Japanese Udon (Hand-made Style), ACE Shikoku Sanuki Udon, Menyuraku Sanuki Zaru Udon Noodle, Japan Furusato Sodachi Udon Image from Locky's English Playground Round 1 -- Price Winner: ACE Shikoku Sanuki Udon -- HK$3.29/100g Round 2 -- "Dry length" of udon noodle Winners: ACE Sanuki Udon and ACE Japanese Udon  -- 24.7cm and 24.5cm respectively Round 3 -- Cooking time of the udon noodle Winners: Menyuraku Sanuki Zaru Udon Noodle --  6 mins Round 4 -- The "Stretch" of the udon noodle Winner: Menyuraku Sanuki Zaru Udon Noodle -- (25.8 - 20.2) / 20.2 x 100% = 27.7% Round 5 -- Edibility!  Winner: ACE Sanuki Udon Overall "Battle Of The 4 Udon" Stage 2 Winner ! ACE Sanuki Udon (again!)

And so ACE Sanuki Udon has won two battles in a row, although it may not be the tastiest udon or the cheapest, it is ranked way up there with the best, thus it really deserves to be the overall champion in both battles, but can it stand the 3rd test of time? Or will it finally be dethroned?

Let's kick off Battle Of The Udon -- Stage 3!!!

Here comes the new challengers!!!
Image from Locky's English Playground

This time round, we have 4 challengers for the two-time champion, Itsuki Hakata Udon is priced very close to ACE Sanuki Udon, Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type has an awesome-looking smooth non-glossy packaging, Yamamoto Seifun Udon is selling how its udon can be served hot and cold while forgetting to put the company logo in front, while Hato Dried Noodle Udon too, having no company name or logo, comes with a simplistic packaging.

Round 1 :  Price-Per-100g!

ACE Sanuki Udon Image from Locky's English Playground	Itsuki Hakata Udon Image from Locky's English Playground
Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type Image from Locky's English Playground	Yamamoto Seifun Udon Image from Locky's English Playground
Hato Dried Noodle Udon Image from Locky's English Playground

Like Stage 2, the udon prices are calculated according to the price bought. 

In Stage 3, our four contestants from left to right, up then down, all bought from AEON / JUSCO Supermarket, are:

• ACE Sanuki Udon, 400g, HK$19.9
• Itsuki Hakata Udon, 400g, HK$20.9
• Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type, 500g, HK$32.9
• Yamamoto Seifun Udon, 400g, HK$21.9
• Hato Dried Noodle Udon, 270g, HK$15.9

And the Price-Per-100g is listed below:

• ACE Sanuki Udon                                    -- HK$4.98/100g
• Itsuki Hakata Udon                                  -- HK$5.23/100g
• Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type             -- HK$6.58/100g
• Yamamoto Seifun Udon                           -- HK$5.48/100g
• Hato Dried Noodle Udon                         -- HK$5.89/100g

And what do you know, ACE Sanuki Udon is the most inexpensive udon this time round! I wonder how many shoppers will notice this price-per-100g figure before they buy?

Sorry, some udon have already been eaten before taking all subsequent photos, that is, a bunch is obviously missing from some packets
Image from Locky's English Playground

Congratulations to ACE Shikoku Sanuki Udon for grabbing the first win in Round 1! Looks like ACE Shikoku Sanuki Udon is off to a great start today!


Round 2: The "dry length" of udon noodle.

Here are the measurements:

ACE Sanuki Udon -- 24.5cm
Image from Locky's English Playground

Itsuki Hakata Udon -- 19.9cm
Image from Locky's English Playground

Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type -- 24.2cm
Image from Locky's English Playground

Yamamoto Seifun Udon -- 19.2cm
Image from Locky's English Playground

Hato Dried Noodle Udon -- 24.5cm
Image from Locky's English Playground

After measuring, the results are:

• ACE Sanuki Udon                          -- 24.5cm
• Itsuki Hakata Udon                        -- 19.9cm
• Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type    -- 24.2cm
• Yamamoto Seifun Udon                  -- 19.2cm
• Hato Dried Noodle Udon                -- 24.5cm

When it comes to length, we have 3 udon very close in length with each other, and so I am going to award this one to 3 udons measured around the length of 24cm!

Congratulations to ACE Sanuki Udon, Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type and Hato Dried Noodle Udon for winning Round 2!

Round 3: Cooking time of the udon noodle

(Left to Right) ACE Sanuki Udon  -- 10 mins, Itsuki Hakata Udon -- 15 mins, Hato Dried Noodle Udon -- 7 mins
Image from Locky's English Playground

(Left to Right) Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type -- 18 mins, Yamamoto Seifun Udon -- 10 mins
Image from Locky's English Playground

All together, the result is as follows:

• ACE Sanuki Udon                                    -- 10 mins
• Itsuki Hakata Udon                                  -- 15 mins
• Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type              -- 18 mins
• Yamamoto Seifun Udon                            -- 10 mins
• Hato Dried Noodle Udon                          -- 7 mins

Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type needs 18 mins for cooking? I really do not get it! Hato Dried Noodle Udon takes this one!

Congratulations to Hato Dried Noodle Udon  for winning Round 3!


Round 4 of the battle is the "Stretch" of the udon noodle

the stretch of each udon!!! This time, apology to the missing close-ups photo of the Yamamoto Seifun Udon.

ACE Sanuki Udon -- 30.9cm Image from Locky's English Playground	ACE Sanuki Udon -- 30.9cm Image from Locky's English Playground
Yamamoto Seifun Udon -- 25cm Image from Locky's English Playground	Itsuki Hakata Udon -- 25cm Image from Locky's English Playground
Itsuki Hakata Udon -- 27cm Image from Locky's English Playground	Itsuki Hakata Udon -- 27cm Image from Locky's English Playground
Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type -- 30.1cm Image from Locky's English Playground	Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type -- 30.1cm Image from Locky's English Playground
Hato Dried Noodle Udon -- 29 cm Image from Locky's English Playground

All together, the result is as follows:

• ACE Sanuki Udon                                    -- (30.9 - 24.5) / 24.5 x 100% = 26.1%
• Itsuki Hakata Udon                                  -- (27.0 - 19.9) / 19.9 x 100% = 35.7%
• Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type              -- (30.1 - 24.2) / 24.2 x 100% = 24.3%
• Yamamoto Seifun Udon                            -- (25.0 - 19.2) / 19.2 x 100% = 30.2%
• Hato Dried Noodle Udon                          -- (29.0 - 24.5) / 24.5 x 100% = 18.4%

From the percentage, we can see that, if you want to have more filling sensation but wants to lower the carb intake, you should go for Itsuki Hakata Udon with 35.7% increase in length! Another surprise is that Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type takes the longest time to cook but has almost the smallest percentage of "stretch".

Congratulations to Itsuki Hakata Udon for winning Round 4!


Round 5, the final round of the battle, is Edibility! 

The judges here are my wife, who did not know which udon she would be eating, and I myself, with my wife's opinions taking the most weight. The whole process was recorded and typed out by me.

• ACE Sanuki Udon                                    -- toughest, taste slightly salty
• Itsuki Hakata Udon                                  -- tough, bland
• Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type              -- too soft, disgusting, very bland
• Yamamoto Seifun Udon                            -- soft, like Chinese ho fun, taste bland
• Hato Dried Noodle Udon                          -- tough, but not chewy, taste ok

And here's her rank:

1. Hato Dried Noodle Udon
2. ACE Sanuki Udon
3. The rest

Congratulations to Hato Dried Noodle Udon for winning Round 5!

I will now add my own opinions into the judgement and present to you my choice of Stage 3 winner, but before I reveal the answer, let me do a quick summary of our current winners:

• Itsuki Hakata Udon -- Winner of Stretch
• Hato Dried Noodle Udon -- Winner of Shortest Cooking Time
• ACE Sanuki Udon, Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type and Hato Dried Noodle Udon --  Winners of Dry Length
• Hato Dried Noodle Udon -- Winner of Edibility
• ACE Sanuki Udon -- Winner of Price-Per-100g

I will have to say that this time round, the competition is not as tight as the previous 2 battles. We know that price is not everything when it comes to food, but surely, Ishimarus Futo-Udon/Thick type at HK$6.58/100g turns out to be the most expensive in terms of purchasing and use of gas in that 18 mins of cooking. Good packaging is now proven to be a poor reference to good udon.

Yamamoto Seifun Udon and Itsuki Hakata Udon, one word for them, mediocre.

The finalists boils down to ACE Sanuki Udon and Hato Dried Noodle Udon. ACE Sanuki Udon has shown us once again its positioning is among the most competitive in this aspect, at the other end, Hato Dried Noodle Udon is the most costly of the badge, whether being the smallest packet scares or attracts customers is an interesting research topic, but smaller packet does mean that it is going for the premium customers rather than general household consumers. Has it then reached that level of taste requirement of the premium customers then? The answer is definitely no.

And so, for the most consistent udon, we have, and yes, once again,

ACE Sanuki Udon wins 3 times in a row!!!
Image from Locky's English Playground

Congratulations to ACE Sanuki Udon 讃岐うどん for becoming Locky's English Playground, "Battle Of The Udon" Stage 3 Winner !

I am starting to think if there will be any other udon out there that can defeat the brilliant ACE Sanuki Udon.

There will be the Battle Of The Udon -- Stage 4, till then, I know which one is the best!

Vocabulary:

stand the test of time -- If something stands the test of time , it is still popular , strong , etc . after a long time

dethrone -- (vb)[T] to beat someone who is the best at something, especially a sport , and become the best yourself

Resources:

Cooking & Food: Battle Of The Udon -- Stage 1
http://lockyep.blogspot.hk/2013/07/cooking-food-battle-of-4-udon-stage-1.html

Cooking & Food: Battle Of The Udon -- Stage 2
http://lockyep.blogspot.hk/2013/07/cooking-food-battle-of-4-udon-stage-2.html

Tokyo Ramen
http://www.tokyo-ramen.com/

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/stand-the-test-of-time?q=stand+the+test+of+time
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/dethrone?q=dethrone+

World Cup News & Sports: Ronaldo's Portugal, Balotelli's Panini, the Rio Night & the Biter!

Portugal out, who's fault?
Image from ESPN

Just a few collection of articles and videos these few days, mainly World Cup related.

Here's what happened to Portugal last night, they are out. They played without teamwork, they played with Nani, Nani and Nani, and Cristiano Ronaldo did his best. Seriously, he did his best. Considering the performance he gave this morning, that he could still outrun and outjump some of the Nigerian players while he's still stuck with that knee injury, I think he has even outperformed himself! Sure he missed several good chances, but those chances are dead close to scoring, and he still scored one! Now that Portugal has lost, who is to blame? I think no one but CR7's club -- Real Madrid, for they over-exhausted him this season and failed to win La Liga.


Here's Mario Balotelli picking himself and only himself as the player to play every single position of the Italian team, self-centredness at its best:

Considerable work went into Mario Balotelli's Italy squad selection.
Photograph & Caption: Guardian

Here's what Rio de Janeiro looks like during a game of football when the Brazilian team plays:

Here's what happened to the guy who bite and the guy who was bitten:

Woke up by the baby at 6am this morning, dead tired. Still, time to return to researching.



Resources:
Mario Balotelli covers up Italy team with own sticker in Panini album
http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/jun/16/mario-balotelli-panini-italy-facebook-world-cup

Alzirão Brazil Fan Festa | Layla's World Cup @ YouTube
http://youtu.be/QFYIAPIalzU

Luis Suarez Bites Giorgio Chiellini @ YouTube
http://youtu.be/SCcgrSaoK9c