Clothes Shopping

aɪ ˈtraɪd tə ˈbaɪ sm̩ ˈkæməflɑːʒ ˈtraʊzəz | ði ˈʌðə ˈdeɪ | bət aɪ ˈkʊdn̩ ˈfaɪnd ˈeni

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Commentary

[Don't worry if you find this difficult. 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.]

triedː When a word ends in a voiced sound (i.e. a vowel or a voiced consonant (except /d/)), the regular <-ed> ending has the form /d/.

to: When unstressed, as it usually is, to has the weak form /tə/ when the immediately following word begins with a consonant. This is true for both the preposition, e.g. Go to hell /ˈɡəʊ tə ˈhel/, and the 'to infinitive', e.g. Go to see /ˈɡəʊ tə ˈsiː/.

some: When some is a determiner meaning an unspecified number or amount, it is usually unstressed and has the weak form /səm/. When the syllable /əm/ is preceded by /s/, it readily forms a syllabic consonant, as shown in the transcription, the articulators moving directly from the position for /s/ to the position for /m/.

Note that in English, syllabic /m/ is not a phoneme in its own right, but merely a special way of realising the syllable /əm/. This means that when we use a special symbol [m̩] 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).

Note that some has a number of other uses (check a good learners’ dictionary), all of which are typically stressed and require the form /sʌm/.

the: 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).

but: When unstressed, as it usually is, the conjunction but has the weak form /bət/.

couldn’t: Although function/grammatical words are generally unstressed in English, negative contractions such as couldn’t (and don’t, won’t, can’t shouldn’t, etc.) are usually stressed.

Although /t/ isn’t usually elided when it is preceded by /n/ (e.g. in bent nail /ˈbent ˈneɪl/, front door /ˈfrʌnt ˈdɔː/), the negative contractions, because of their high frequency, are an exception and their final /t/ can be elided before both consonants and vowels (e.g. I couldn’t say /aɪ ˈkʊdn̩ ˈseɪ/. He didn’t ask /hi ˈdɪdn̩ ˈɑːsk/.), but not before a pause. This is much more common in the case of disyllabic negative contractions (e.g. didn’t, doesn’t, haven’t, hasn’t, hadn’t, shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t, etc.). In the case of monosyllabic negative contractions (won’t, can’t), elision of /t/ is only usual in rather casual speech.

I tried to buy some camouflage trousers the other day, but I couldn’t find any.