A Special Gift

ˈwɒʧə ˈɡɪv ə ˈmæn u ˈhæz ˈevriθɪŋ ||

ˈæntibaɪˈɒtɪks

Key at bottom of page.

Commentary

[Don't worry if you find this overwhelming. Don't let yourself be put off. The same phenomena will come up again and again in these transcriptions. There'll be plenty of opportunities for them to sink in over time. Slow and steady, a little each day, is the key to success.]

Explanation: The usual interpretation of What do you give a man who has everything? is What gift can you give a man who is so rich that he has everything he wants?, but the answer antibiotics assumes a different possible interpretation: What medicine do you give a man who has every disease?

what do you: High-frequency phrases tend to undergo more radical processes of assimilation and elision than other less common word combinations. In the case of what do you, there is a spectrum of pronuncations. The most unselfconscious, least formal version (but by no means vulgar or unusual among speakers of standard English) is given here. The most formal, careful version (without becoming artificial or stressing usually unstressed words for special effect) would be /ˈwɒt də ju/. The informal version involves the use of the weak form /jə/ for you before a consonant, the elision of /də/, and the coalescence of /t/ and /j/ to form /ʧ/.

a: When unstressed, as it usually is, the indefinite article a has the weak form /ə/.

who: As a relative pronoun, who is usually unstressed and can have the weak form /u/. As an interrogative pronoun, who is usually stressed and has no weak form (e.g. Who is it? /ˈhuː ˈɪz ɪt/ Who's asking? /ˈhuːz ˈɑːskɪŋ).

everything: When schwa /ə/ is followed by /r/ and then an unstressed syllable, the schwa /ə/ is often elided. Memory /ˈmeməri/ becomes /ˈmemri/, separate (adj.) /ˈsepərət/ becomes /ˈseprət/, etc. In the case of every, the word is so common that for most people /ˈevri/ is probably the form they have in their mental lexicon and the form /ˈevəri/, if they occasionally use it, is caused by the influence of the spelling.

The symbol i represents the same vowel phoneme as the symbol iː. We use i in unstressed syllables and iː in stressed syllables. This distinction isn't very helpful for TEFL purposes and learners should simply treat the two symbols as the same. Because we are using two different symbols for one phoneme, this means our transcription isn't truly phonemic (phonemic transcription = one symbol for each phoneme).

antibiotics: When a noun ends in a voiceless consonant /p t k f θ/ (except /s ʃ ʧ/), the regular plural is formed by adding /s/ (e.g. lips /lɪps/, bits /bɪts/, ticks /tɪks/, cliff /klɪfs/, breaths /breθs/). The same pattern applies to possessive s, third person singular s and the contracted form of is.

What do you give a man who has everything?

Antibiotics.