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

At 06:56 5.2.2003 -0600, Danny Wier wrote:
>Danish-Norwegian-Swedish: i I e E ae y Y o/ oe (OE) @ a u U o O Q A (17 or 18)
Lest this misconception be perpetuated: Swedish and Norwegian both have 9 
vowels:

i   y      o
e   u      å
ä/æ ö/ø    a

which may be long or short depending on context, i.e. length is determined 
by phonemic and morphological context, but is hardly Deep distinctive.



Danish has ten vowel phonemes plus a length prosody which is distinctive:

i   y      u
e   ø      o
æ   (ö)    å
       a

Note that Danish /ö/ is not orthographically distinguished from 
/ø/.  Danish length is distinctive, but long and short pairs don't differ 
phonetially from each other, so an analysis with an underlying prosodeme 
[length] seems preferable.

Historically they both derive from the common scandinavian system which was 
a lot like the Danish:

i   y      u
e   ø      o
æ       a  å

Also with distinctive length, so yes 20 Vs if you are of that school...

/ B.Philip Jonsson B^)>
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