Re: English and French vowels

Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> As far as oral vowels go, you forgot /@/ (the vowel of "le", "de", "ce",
> etc..., only possible in unstressed position, but *not* the unstressed form
> of any other vowel).
In contexts where "le" *is* stressed, though (e.g. contrastively), it comes
out /l2/, which suggests that [@] is /2/, at least some of the time.
One might also claim that [@] is simply epenthetic, i.e. zero phonemically,
though there are perhaps counterexamples to this.

> The two vowels /A/ and /9~/ that used to be part of the French vowel system
> up to only twenty years ago have now completely disappeared (I have
> witnessed them vanish from everyone's speech, *including mine*! :)
In February 2003 on this very list you were saying that though you had
collapsed /A/ and /a/, you still had the four nasal vowels!  So the change
for you is very recent indeed...

( http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0302D&L=conlang&D=0&P=19181 )

> > So you still have four distinct nasal vowels?
>
> Yep.
>
> > I had thought that most varieties of French were down to three.
>
> Indeed, but mine is only at the edge of losing them. Children born
> currently will probably have only three nasal vowels, but most people
> of my age still do have four.
>
> Christophe.
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