Re: Russian orthography (was: A perfect day ...)

Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> Strange, I had a discussion about it with my boyfriend just a few days ago.
> In his small booklet to use French in a few situations, they explained to
> pronounce the 'ui' as Dutch 'wie' and I didn't agree. But by comparing our
> pronunciations, we discovered that his 'w' was more like the semi-vowel of
> French in 'lui' than like the English 'w'. Does anyone know the exact
> phonological definition of this sound?
It's a rounded front semivowel.  Although Dutch has a rounded front vowel /y/
written "u", it does not have a corresponding semivowel, unlike French.
Probably his "w" is being pulled forward by the following front vowel /i/.

> Of course, he was also unable to make any difference between 'Louis' and
> 'lui', whereas I find this difference as distinct as the difference between
> the semi-vowels /w/ and /j/.
French is unusual (I think) in having three distinct semivowels, /j/, /w/, and
/h-upside-down/, related to /i/, /u/, and /y/ respectively.
I think that /h-upside-down/ occurs only before front vowels in French.

--

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