world

Last week, I was in Myanmar. This is the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon.

Our guide told us that there is a large ruby at the top, and Myanmar produces the 'most rubies in the [wɔː]'. When she said this, I had an image of the Second World War cutting supplies from everywhere else, but somehow Burma (as it was then called) managed to continue producing them. It took me a while to realise she was saying 'most rubies in the world' – and indeed, Myanmar produces about 90% of the world's rubies (according to the Lonely Planet guide, page 272).

This use of [ɔː] for the NURSE vowel with words starting with 'wor' (as discussed in my previous blog) seems to be very common around the world. I wonder if it will become the standard pronunciation in World Englishes. Maybe it already is the standard, and people like me need to get used to it.

Piplo

Having been in Brunei for nearly nine years now, I like to think I have adjusted to the local pronunciation of English. However, I still get caught out sometimes.

Recently, I went to the Ong Sum Ping clinic in BSB for a medical check-up, and I was told that I needed to go to Piplo. At first, I thought this must be some other place in Brunei, and the lady had to repeat it a few times before I realised she was saying 'fifth floor'. Actually, I should have got that, as it is only the use of [p] instead of [f] – in this case, all three [f]s become [p]. (In addition, the final TH in 'fifth' is omitted; but this is hardly surprising, as the TH is surrounded by three other consonants, [f] before it and [fl] after it, so omission of the TH sound is not unexpected.)

Then, when I went to register for the check-up, the man at the counter asked 'Are you [wɔːkɪŋ]?'. I heard this as 'walking', so I said 'No, my car is outside' (perhaps they wanted to know if I kept fit by doing regular exercise). But when it was repeated with 'Are you at ITB', I realised he was saying 'working', not 'walking'. This misunderstanding is interesting, as it involves an instance of spelling pronunciation. Most words with 'or' are pronounced with [ɔː]: 'fort', 'port', 'sort', 'short', 'sport', 'fork', 'pork', 'stork', 'born', 'corn', 'torn', 'worn', 'sworn', 'cord', 'ford', 'sword' etc, and I can only think of five in which 'or' is pronounced as [ɜː]: 'word', 'worm', 'worse', 'world' and 'word'. (I'm not sure why they all involve 'w'.)

Given that 'or' is usually [ɔː], it is not too surprising that 'working' sometimes gets pronounced as [wɔːkɪŋ] rather than the expected [wɜːkɪŋ].