Sounds, duh. . .

The online American Heritage Dictionary pronunciation of "duh" is a subdued rendition of the word.1 In common usage the vowel is more prolonged. The inflection is also more pronounced with the tone falling a full 7th, in musical terms.2 Transcribed into the alphabet of the International Phonetics Association (IPA), the word "duh" would be

The transcription is put inside slash marks to indicate this is a phonetic spelling. The large upside-down "v" indicates a sound like "u" in the word "butt".

Long vowels

The colon following this vowel indicates that the vowel sound should be prolonged. It is a genuine "long vowel."

Teachers mis-speak when they refer to "long vowels" like "a" in "name" as opposed to "short vowels" like "a" in "hat." More precisely, according to phonologists, that "a" in "name" is a mid-frontal vowel without rounded lips, while the "a" in "hat" is a low, front-to-central vowel without rounded lips. The terms about "mid" and "low" refer to how high the tongue is when the vowel is said. The "frontal" and "front-to-central" descriptions refer to the part of the tongue moved.

A "long vowel" is, in fact, a vowel with the sound prolonged. English had genuine "long vowels" until the Great Vowel Shift between 1400 and 1600. 3

Is it possible that is ushering in a gradual return to prolonged vowels? In addition to this word with a prolonged vowel, we can hear young people say /bæ:d/ as distinguised from /bæd/. While "bad" may be used as a negative adjective, the prolonged "ba-a-a-d" will often indicate a positive adjective.

Tone Language

In English we would not normally see the small upside-down "v" since this is a diacritical mark indicating a tone falling from high to low. The majority of languages in the world are tonal languages.4 English, however, does not use tones to differentiate words. Because of this, some fussy phonologists might say the IPA transcription should be inside [brackets] instead of /slash/ marks. Brackets would indicate that the transcription is an allophone, that is, an acceptable phonetic variant of the word.

However, in the case of "duh," any loss of the falling tone significantly alters the word's meaning. If a person says "duh" without the falling tone, most listeners will assume this is simply a sound to fill the pause while thinking, similar to the utterances common in American English, "umm" or "uhh." In contrast, "duh" said with the falling tone is a word expressing contempt for foolishness.

In this way, "duh" as cultivates the phonemic sensitivity of American English speakers.

Retroflex

Homer Simpson's "Doh!" should be transcribed with the IPA alphabet as:

The normal "d" sound in American English is pronounced by putting the tip of the tongue at the bony base of the teeth and pushing a burst of air through while letting the voice flaps in the larynx vibrate. (Phonologists would say the sound is a "voiced alveolar oral stop".) For this particular word, however, instead of just using the tip of the tongue, the back of tongue tip curls up and lays across the base of the teeth. This produces a retroflex "d." Throughout these pages I have written "Doh!" with a capital "D" to express the retroflex.

Glottal Stop

The question mark with a base replacing the dot indicates a glottal stop. This is the sound made when saying "ah-ah-ah-ah" in a sharp staccato manner.

Again, this glottal stop is not merely an acceptable variant of the word. Without the glottal stop a person may be saying "doh," the word used for music when singing "do-re-mi". Or the person might be refering to "dough". Homer Simpson's "Doh!" usually is written with an exclamation mark to express this glottal stop. Even the OED Online newsletter about the inclusion of the word spells the word with the exclamation mark, although the entry for "Doh!" itself does not do so.

Notes:

1. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is online at http://www.bartleby.com/61/ For many entries it provides a link to an audio pronunciation.

2. This assertion about the musical equivalent is a gross overgeneralization and wild speculation on my part. A friend and I tried listening to several "duh"s to figure out how great the gap is in musical terms. I liked the idea of it being a 7th since that is so dissonant, and dissonance characterizes the sarcasm expressed by the word "duh."

Lou Bispo is far more expert on this and has sent an e-mail note:

the interval used to express the duh! sound musically varies greatly. it can be as small as a minor third; perfect fourth i think would be the most common; augmented fourth or diminished fifth (tritone - this would be a good one if you want to indicate dissonance in expressing contempt); the seventh, when used, would be a minor seventh and sounds to me like extreme emphasis--i would think the use of the major seventh in speech is rare in western languages.

3. Please see the excellent web site about The Great Sound Shift by Melinda J. Menzer. The site includes an opportunity to hear the changes that happened.

4. On page 241 of An Introduction to Language (sixth edition), Fromkin and Rodman write that there are more than one thousand tone languages in Africa. In addition, Chinese (spoken by more people than any other single language), Burmese and Thai all require tones. Many Native American languages also are tonal.