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Re: USAGE: Finnish and English vowels (was: Adapting non-Latin scripts)

From:John Vertical <johnvertical@...>
Date:Thursday, May 25, 2006, 18:06
> > >Umm... So does that mean a word like /kAt/ you'd consider to rhyme > > >with a word like /pA:t/? > > > > No. The first has one /A/; the second has two. Nor would /pAAt/ rhyme >with > > /pAkAt/, since this has two syllabes; the other has only one. > >Yeah, I realised after I wrote that that things like stress will make >that different; not even "thing" and "anything" rhyme in English >because of stress.
Bizarre. They certainly rhyme to my ears. :) Stress is not crucial in Finnish poetry, tho poets do prefer to rhyme (primarily or secondarily) stressed syllabes with other stressed syllabes.
>(I think I've asked the question before, but I >cannot recall the answer: In sung Australian English, you normally >(certainly to the extent you can) put long vowels on long notes and >short ones on short notes. I've heard in Finnish you just completely >ignore length 110%. Is that actually the case?)
Checking the nearest songbook, I indeed don't notice any particular correlation between the lengths of notes and syllabes.
> > trade-in of phonemic length for phonemic syllabicity. Here's a neat >minimal > > triplet: > >A "trade-off". (Trade-ins completely replace one thing with another.)
Uh? So how is a trade-off any different then? Anyway, yes, I indeed mean to completely get rid of phoneMic lenght. (While on the phoneTic level, length of course exists.) Maybe it's because of our orthography, but long phonemes *are* seen fully equivalent to two short phonemes in a row. You could make a stand for _suprasegmental_ length, but even then, nobody thinks of long phonemes as unitary, as I see the /:/ symbol suggesting.
> > > > A syllabe-final glide interpretation works too, but then at least > > > > an additional schwa must be positioned. > > > > > >(I also thought there's a set of diphthongs > > >/ie/, /y2/, /uo/, which I can't see how you'd interpret them as > > >having syllable-final glides.) > > > > That's where that additional schwa comes in: /i@ y@ u@/. Long vowels >will be > > /ij yv\ uv\ e@ 2@ &@ o@ a@/. It's something of a cheat, but it works, >and > > makes the system a nice regular 4x8 block. > >Youch! (Are the long vowels ever realised with /@/ offsets?)
No. ;) Some dialects however insert epenthetic schwas in various consonant clusters, and this schwa always assimilates to the previous vowel, so there's some sort of a precedent for this usage of /@/ ... altho I confess never having seen anyone actually using the /@/ symbol for it.
> > -I should stress that this system is my own invention and would probably >be > > scowled on by professional Finnish linguistics. > >Yes; it strikes me as over-complicating the system; vowel length does >the trick well-enough...
Except with /ie y2 uo/. Well, unless those are analyzed as /e: 2: o:/ (from which they diachronically stem) and the modern [e: 2: o:] as /E: 9: O:/... I have overengineering tricks for consonants up my sleeve, too; how would analyzing [hAmp:u] as /hAn?pu/ sound? :D
>Confusion?! You were analysing "bird" as /"b@d/? That strikes me as >more than a bit funny, considering /@/ a long vowel [;)]. Fact of the >matter is, /@/ *does* occur only in unstressed syllables. You could >variously (depending on context) unify it with /e/, /i/ and /A/ if you >want to eliminate it, which has the advantage of being somewhat >intuitive.
No, /b@rd/. I'd have problems with the difference (of rhotic 'lects) between "India" and "indier" otherwise. I still think that the unrhotic vowel traditionally transcribed as /3:/ sounds closer to /@/ than any of /I E V/ do; and schwa behaves like a long (unchecked) vowel anyway, since it can end a word.
>Coming from a Finnish perspective (but biased by my native >dialect), the Finnish vowel /2:/ seems the best choice for the vowel >in "bird", even though it means we've got a vowel that's only ever >long---but that accords with the nature of the language. Last but not >least, there's the possibility of considering [@] to be /2/. Front >rounded vowels and central vowels are somewhat similar phonetically, >and seeing as the vowel is only used in unstressed syllables it'll >lose parts of its quality anyway... > >(Then again, I suppose you were trying to be a bit outlandish---it >just didn't seem all that much, considering again my native dialect :)
I could have tossed /2 2:/ in too - that's indeed what less educated Finns tend to use - but since I was going for rhotic American English, I restrained.
>[And if you were going for non-rhotic, then you forgot an equivalent >of /e:/, /I@/ and /U@/.]
Those "look like" /e@ i@ u@/. Or /e2 i2 u2/ if you want to use "rälli traivör inglis", as ridiculously bad English pronounciation is known around here.
> > Yeah. That works. Of course, without a central regulating body, it'll >never > > actually break into usage... I suspect English orthography won't get any > > major revamps until it's already broken down into a full-grown language > > family a few centuries from now. I hope to get at least minor fixes in > > before that, however. > >You reckon we respell then? You are an optimist aren't you! > >-- >Tristan.
Heh, I fully expect at least some dialects to keep the traditional spelling even after their <i>'s are pronounced (varyingly) /a e i a: e: i: ai ei je ju/ and their <qu>'s /pf g Z/; but certainly some of the countries resulting from the 2nd American Civil War of the 2300s are going to revamp, too. :) John Vertical

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Tristan Alexander McLeay <conlang@...>