Re: Diphthongs

Vasily Chernov wrote:
> >    In my opinion, [ai] is a diphthong, HOWEVER, [aj] is a much shorter
> >diphthong, such that it's easier to be thought of as one sound rather
>than
> >two, whereas [ai] could be thought of as two.  If you put glottal stops
>in
> >between the vowels than there's no question; it's not a diphthong.  A
>good
> >way to tell which you have is to lengthen it.  If you lengthen [aj],
>you'll
> >end up with [a:j] with a very short release.
>
>Or [aj:], e.g. in Swedish (AFAIK).
Hm, in my pronounciation, [j] never gets long. When I think about it, it
seems to make more sense to see /aj/, /oj/, /ej/ etc as diphthongs than as
vowel-plus-consonant as I was thought in school. For a start, I can't have
long vowels before /j/, and the /j/ attaches to the preceeding syllable when
intervocal - for instance "naja" is /naj.a/, not "na-ja" as my basic-school
teachers'd had me syllabify it.

                                                       Andreas

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