Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 January 12

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January 12

Film quote - I hear "as" where everyone hears "is"

In Top Gun: Maverick, a quote reads "Sir, Overwatch reports an F-14 Tomcat is airborne and on course for our position." At least some 100 pages on the internet concur about this quote. But whenever I hear it, I am sure that it actually is "Sir, Overwatch reports an F-14 Tomcat AS airborne and on course for our position." Do I have hearing problems, or everyone else? --KnightMove (talk) 14:45, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

I hear it as is. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:56, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

With the weak vowel merger, there can be no difference between the weak forms of as and is (with the result that both sound more like one or the other to speakers without the merger). Nardog (talk) 18:11, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for that info, this is very interesting. But then, would they use actors using that merger in a non-accent related Hollywood film?

@Mahagaja: Would you say the "is" is pronounced in the same way as the following quotes, or differently?

My name is Inigo Montoya.

What we've got here is a failure to communicate.

"This is madness." - "This is Sparta!"

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works.

The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.

In all of those quotes, I hear the "is" clearly as "is". But the Top Gun quote, the vowel seems more open to me. Does my brain play tricks on me? --KnightMove (talk) 07:47, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

This is the key to allophony: multiple physical sounds which the speakers do not recognize as distinct, often these sounds are in free variation. If YOU speak a dialect or a language that maintains a distinction between those sounds, YOU will notice differences that someone who speaks a language that merge the sounds into the same phoneme do not. One other thing to consider is that it depends on where the word "is" appears in relation to the stress patterns of the utterance. The vowel is more likely to be realized as [ɪ] in even slightly stressed speech, even in American English, but more likely to be realized as [ǝ] in some unstressed positions. In the Top Gun example from above, to my ear, it becomes a schwa because the "is" is spoken in an entirely unstressed way. Your other examples either feature dialects with different stress patterns (Inigo Montoya is a Spaniard, for example, and Gerard Butler is Scottish) or the speaker is using the "is" in a more stressed position in the sentence. Gordon Gecko deliberately stresses the "is" because he is speaking for emphasis. Tyler Durden ends his clause with "is", and that puts some additional stress on "is". In your initial example, the "is" comes in the middle of a clause, with no particular stress, and is spoken by someone who clearly has the vowel merger as part of their normal speech. --Jayron32 13:26, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

"Why would they use actors using that merger in a non-accent related Hollywood film?" The weak vowel merger is so widespread in American English that the people in charge of casting a movie aren't going to be noticing whether an actor has it or not, the way they would notice a thick Southern accent or a thick Boston accent. And maybe the [ɪ] in this token is a little more open than in other tokens, but to my ear it's not open enough to be mistaken for as. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:22, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Then I have learned some English that way, thank you. --KnightMove (talk) 09:57, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

It sounds more like "as" than "is" to my English ears. Indeed, I doubt I would have considered the possibility of it being "is" if I had not read this question. DuncanHill (talk) 10:34, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Then I'm glad not to be alone here with BrE learned at school. Maybe some other people across the English-speaking world can add their opinions? --KnightMove (talk) 11:22, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

In any non-stressed position, in some dialects of English, all weak vowels tend to drift towards a neutral schwa sound. This is what is described as the weak vowel merger. You see this things like the eye dialect version of "must have", which reduces to "must've" in colloquial speech, and often gets misunderstood as "must of", see, for example, "Must of Got Lost" (or preferably listen to it; the version from Blow Your Face Outis quite good.) --Jayron32 13:16, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn’t think about it much, as it has little to no effect on the meaning of the quote. Primal Groudon (talk) 06:42, 17 January 2023 (UTC)