THE SOUND |U|
as the first sound in oomph and umlaut
See also |OO| and the note on
|OO| and |U| below
With primary stress on:
first syllable:
OOMPH;
OOPS [var: cp |OO|1];
UM-LAUT(S)
|OO| and |U|
The adjacent sounds |OO| and |U| do not often distinguish words from
the spoken language in meaning. There are many more words in which the
vowel can be pronounced as either |OO| or |U| than pairs of words whose
meanings depend on whether the vowel is |OO| instead of |U|. Words such
as broom, coop, groom, hoof, hoop, oops, roof, room, root, whoop
and woof may be pronounced with either |OO| or |U| in the present
language, altho, of course, not in all its dialects. Thus, |BROOM| has
precisely the same meaning as |BRUM| (namely, that of broom).
Nonetheless, the sounds |OO| and |U| differentiate semantically
in |FOOL| (fool) versus |FUL| (full) and in |POOL|
(pool) versus |PUL| (pull). These words would have been
'homonyms' in the spoken language, if the difference between |OO| and
|U| had not mattered. Yet, in these pairs it is usually also the
grammatical category which differs, the two words with |OO| being nouns
and the two with |U| being an adjective, adverb or verb. Only if |POOL|
(to pool) is used as a verb as well, will the speaker or listener
have to depend much more on the difference between the sound |OO| and the
sound |U|, something that is even more so the case in |SOOT| (suit)
versus |SUT| (soot), which can both have the function of a noun or a
verb. Because of word pairs such as |SOOT| and |SUT|, with the difference
in meaning between suit and soot, the sounds |OO| and |U|
must be considered separate phonemes. On the whole, however, the
distinction between them is definitely less important than the one
between, for example, |EE| (as in eat) and |I| (as in it),
which are adjacent phonemic vowels too.
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