târuven vowels and diphthongs

By popular demand ;) (Daniel, please ask and comment eyh?)
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The IPA-ASCII scheme used is X-SAMPA, see

    http://www.unil.ch/ling/phonetique/api-eng.html

for pronounciation-files (if they don't work I've got wav-files that
do work, just ask.) I've tried to pick symbols as close to the actual
_sounds_ from the site above as possible.
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TÂRUVEN VOWELS AND DIPHTHONGS

târuven has six short vowels:

a /A/ e /e/ i /i/ o /u/ u /}/ y /y/

and six long vowels:

â /A:/ ê /e:/ î /i:/ ô /u:/ û /}:/ y^ /y:/

An umlaut (¨) does nothing to the actual pronounciation of the vowel,
it's just an orthographic quirk. [In the native script, morphemes
containing an umlauted vowel have a separate, non-alphabetic sign aka.
"shortcut symbol" or "abbreviation symbol".]


* TWO VOWELS NEXT TO EACHOTHER

When two vowels stand next to each other, having no diacritics, an
umlaut or a circumflex (^), they are

1) pronounced separately: ai /a.i/
2) counted as two separate, short sounds
3) not of the same syllable

If the _second_ vowel in the combo has a grave (`) or acute (')
diacritic they are:

1) a _diphthong_: aì /AL/ åì /AH/ aò /Aw/ yí /Hi/ oí /wi/
2) counted as a single, long sound
3) of the same syllable

The diacritic on the second vowel tells which of the two vowels that is
reduced:

- if it's a grave (`), it's the second that is weak/reduced
- if it's an acute ('), it's the first that is weak/reduced

The mnemonic I use is that the diacritic "points downwards" towards the weak
vowel. Thinking of acute-diphthongs as iambs and grave-diphthongs as
trochees is also a way to do it.

If the two vowels next to each other are of the same type, and the second
has a grave or an acute we have:

1) a _double vowel_: aà /A_H:\A_L>/ aá /A_LA_H:\/
2) counted as a single, long sound
3) of the same syllable

As you can see I've used tone-marks here for emphasis, diphthongs are in
fact similar, tone-wise: grave gives high-low, acute gives low-high.


* THREE OR MORE VOWELS NEXT TO EACH OTHER

To illustrate:

a) aaa /A.A.A/
b) aáa /A_LA_H:\.A/
c) aìa /AL.A/
d) aìá /ALA/
e) åìò /AHw/

a) has three syllables, b) and c) two each, and d) and e), which are
triphthongs, have one syllable each.

All of this is, of course, a somewhat simplified version of the real
thing. Fact is, the weak/reduced vowels aren't as reduced as one might
assume from the above, so aì /Ai_X/ is another possible IPAfication.


* EXERCISES
Exercise A:

An aìóáoùíoóêy is probably some form of bird.

1) How many syllables (and where are the breaks?)
2) How many
    - short sounds
    - long sounds
    - short vowels
    - long vowels
    - double-vowels
    - diphthongs
    - triphthongs
    - tetraphthongs

Exercise B:
Find some other, better way to mark up the same thing. ;) (You may ask
for occurance-frequencies)
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t.