Re: OT: English and front rounded vowels

On Dec 7, 2007, at 6:12 PM, T. A. McLeay wrote:

> Eric Christopherson wrote:
>> On Dec 5, 2007, at 7:07 PM, T. A. McLeay wrote:
>>> In English, the high front rounded vowels were unrounded towards
>>> the end
>>> of the Old English period. Mid front rounded vowels were either lost
>>> much earlier, or generally not written. Decent (;) dialects of
>>> English
>>> have since re-created them from things like [u:] and [@:].
>> A rounded [@:]? Does that belong to the phoneme which in rhotic
>> dialects is /r=/? In which case, I wonder if that's why German /
>> 2/  and /9/ sometimes get pronounced in English as /r=/, e.g.
>> _Göthe_ /"gr=t@/, _danke schön_ /"daNk@ Sr=n/.
>
> I don't think it has much to do with the fact that (some) Australians,
> Kiwis and probably Londoners have a vowel somewhat like [2:] or
> [8:] for
> rhotic /r=/, but instead the same thing which motivated the rounding
> also motivates associating /2:/ with the more dominant unrounded [@:]
> variant of /3:/. This gets a bit technical; I don't know how much you
> know about phonetics, so I'll try to explain everything.
[snip]

Very interesting. Thanks!