Talk:soft a

RFD discussion: May 2022–January 2023

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soft a

While the pronunciation difference most likely has social significance, this is still just an SOP description of a pronunciation difference. How is this different from saying "with a schwa", "ending in a vowel" or "without the r"? Chuck Entz (talk) 14:42, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

IMO this "soft a" arose not as an SOP but as a specific contrast to "hard r". I could be persuaded otherwise. Is there any other word where "soft a" is used in this sense? (Possibles: anotha, betta, brotha, gangsta, massa, mothafucka, neighba, rappa, sucka, wanka, yestaday; betcha, cuppa, fella, kinda, shoulda, yella.) Here's an online discussion about what "soft a" might mean as an SOP and the options are not this. There is no Template:&SOP analog of Template:&lit; if there were then one might add it here as a separate second sense. Jnestorius (talk) 19:50, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Unsure. It's true "soft a" can mean a number of things; google books:pronounced "with a soft a" has examples. I'm not sure if the counterpart sense to hard r has some kind of specificity about it that sets it apart; as Jnestorius asks, can this "-a instead of -er" sense be used of the same sound at the end of bigga or trigga, or only the n-word? But then again, even if it can't be used of bigga, I see uses in reference to e.g. Nora, so mehhh... - -sche (discuss) 08:21, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

Keep. The term exists as a counterpart to hard r, which makes it not SOP. Although there are plenty of words ending in the same "soft A" sound (such as brotha or playa), those terms aren't referred to as "the soft A" without context. Binarystep (talk) 09:03, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

• Closed as kept No votes for deletion other than nominator, no votes in 5 months. Purplebackpack89 18:10, 24 January 2023 (UTC)