Re: tlhn'ks't, ngghlyam'ft, and other scary words

Daniel Andreasson wrote:
>Danny Wier wrote:
>
> > !Xu~ 95 (48 clicks)
> > Lak 60
> > an unidentified variety of Arabic 56
>
>8<-- snip rest of list of most consonants -->8
>
>Does anyone have a similar list of languages with the
>most vowels? I know about that site which describes
>different vowel systems, and it ranks Swedish among
>the highest with like 19 vowels (even though phonemically
>it's just nine). Surely there must be languages with
>more vowels than that? Or do you have to resort to long/
>short/overlong, nasalized, pharyngealization, et al. to
>beat that?
I usually claim that my 'lect has 18 vowel phonemes. That'd include nine
long ones, eight short ones and one diphthong /au/, so ten if length doesn't
count (I don't really see why it shouldn't).

Swedish isn't normally analyzed as having any phonemic diphthongs, and
considering the various Vj sequences as biphonemic don't really cause any
trouble with my 'lect, unless you're unhappy with syllabifications -VC.V-
(eg girl's name Maja ['maj.a]). But I can't see what to do with [aU] in
words like _paus_ "pause", _rauk_ "a kind odd-looking crags found on
Gotland's shores". Analyzing as /a:v/ doesn't work since _paus_ then rhyme
with _stavs_ "staff's", which it certainly does not. [av] is rare, but
occurs and I can't bring myself to think it's an allophone of [aU], even if
I can't seem to find any minimal pairs. Is there any accepted way to do away
with it? Aside from the assertion of an old textbook I saw that my
pronunciation does not occur?

                                                   Andreas

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