How to Spoil a Joke

ˈænəlaɪzɪŋ ˈhjuːmə | ɪz ˈlaɪk daɪˈsektɪŋ ə ˈfrɒɡ || ˈfjuː ˈpiːpl̩ ər ˈɪntrəstɪd | ən ðə ˈfrɒɡ ˈdaɪz

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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.]

analysing: In the British tradition of phonetics, post-tonic stresses (i.e. those occurring after the primary stress in a word) are not usually marked in dictionaries and transcriptions. It can be argued that post-tonic secondary stresses should be recognised and that words such as analyse should be transcribed /ˈænəˌlaɪz/ instead of /ˈænəlaɪz/. Fortunately, the presence or absence of post-tonic stress marks isn’t of much importance in phonetics for EFL purposes.

humour is: For this joke, I decided a slow delivery would be best because it is quite dense with information and ideas. This is why there’s a pause between humour and is. Note that the presence of a pause blocks the contraction of is with humour (i.e. humour’s /ˈhjuːməz/) or, if we choose not to reduce is to /z/, the pause blocks /r/-liaison (i.e. humour is /ˈhjuːmər ɪz/). Note also that the same is not true of intonational phrase boundaries (marked with the <|> symbol when they occur within sentences and with <||> at the end of sentences). Features of connected speech such as assimilation, elision and liaison can occur across intonational phrase boundaries when there is no pause, as is often the case.

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

people: Phonemically, the final syllable of people is /əl/. When this syllable is preceded by /p/, however, the schwa /ə/ isn't pronounced. Instead the articulators move directly from the position for /p/ to the position for /l/. This is easy to do in the case of /p/ because /p/ is articulated with the two lips and /l/ is articulated with the tongue-tip. These articulators can move independently of each other and so when the lips move apart to release the /p/, the tongue tip is already in position for the /l/ and no intervening schwa /ə/ occurs.

Note that in English, syllabic /l/ is not a phoneme in its own right, but merely a special way of realising the syllable /əl/. This means that when we use a special symbol [l̩] for it in transcription, it makes our transcription non-phonemic (because we are now using more than one symbol for each phoneme and introducing a special symbol to show a particular phonetic detail)

interested: 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 interest, the word is so common (particularly in the forms interested and interesting) that for most people /ˈɪntrəst/ is probably the form they have in their mental lexicon and the form /ˈɪntərəst/, if they occasionally use it, is caused by the influence of the spelling. A variant pronunciation with /e/ in the final syllable is increasingly common, in which case, the elision of the schwa is not undone and the pronunciation is /ˈɪntrest/.

and: When unstressed, as it usually is, and has the weak form /ən/ or /ənd/. Some books say that /ən/ is used before consonants and /ənd/ before vowels, but this is not true. While both forms can be heard before consonants and vowels, /ən/ is much more common than /ənd/. Learners can safely use only /ən/ for the weak form of and because it will never be wrong to do so.

the: When unstressed, as it usually is, the has the weak form /ðə/ when a consonant immediately follows.

dies: The s of the third person singular has three pronunciations:

·         When the verb ends in /s z ʃ ʒ ʧ ʤ/, then the third person singular is pronounced /ɪz/, e.g. kisses /ˈkɪsɪz/, fizzes /ˈfɪzɪz/, rushes /ˈrʌʃɪz/, camouflages /ˈkæməflɑːʒɪz/, reaches /ˈriːʧɪz/, dodges /ˈdɒʤɪz/.

·         When the final sound of the preceding word is voiceless (excluding /s ʃ ʧ/), then the third person singular is pronounced /s/, e.g. rips /rɪps/, hits /hɪts/, rocks /rɒks/, coughs /kɒfs/, unearths /ʌnˈɜːθs/.

·         If the final sound of the preceding word is voiced (i.e a vowel or one of the voiced consonants (excluding /z ʒ ʤ/)), then the third person singular is pronounced /z/.

This is the same pattern as with possessive s, plural s and the contraction of is.

Analysing humour is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested, and the frog dies.