Re: The existence of low, rounded vowels

Roger Mills wrote:
>
>Dan Seriff wrote:
>
> >Andreas Johansson wrote:
> >>
> >> In class today, my German teacher told us that there's no such thing as
>low,
> >> rounded vowels. Yet, I seem to be able to produce such (remember that
>thread
> >> on the "OE" sound?), and they do occur in my vowel charts (two ones to
>be
> >> exact - the front "OE" sound and [Q]).
> >>
> >> Now, is there anyone who's got an idea as to why the teacher 'd say
>that
> >> these vowels don't exist? Apart from they being uncommon? Is there, for
> >> instance, a tendency that they're not quite as low as [a] and [A] (so
>you
> >> could described them as "almost low" or something like that)?
> >
> >Actually, if I round the vowel [A] in "father", it ends up being just a
> >little *lower* and farther forward than [A]. This is the turned cursive
> ><a>, represented by ascii [A.]. I think your German teacher is quite
> >wrong on this count. Maybe this teacher was referring to Standard German
> >only, in which case they'd be quite correct.
He clearly stated they didn't exist at all - he denied their existence in my
grandparents' dialect, which I didn't give enough info on for him to
identify.

>Apparently (according to
> >Ladefoged and Maddieson), the Amstetten dialect of Bavarian has this
> >vowel, but I can't find any other examples.
> >
>Andreas:  perhaps your teacher was denying the existence of LOW FRONT
>rounded vowels???
He said "one can't pronounce rounded low vowels", but we were talking about
whether there was a rounded equivalent of [a].

>IIRC the IPA chart has a rounded counterpart for i, I, e,
>E (y, small cap Y, OE, o-slash) but none for AE (æ)-- but nothing prevents
>one from rounding the lips while pronouncing [æ].
Well, the only vowel chart I could find in a hurry shows no rounded
couterpart for [æ], but has one for [a], namely the small cap OE ligature.

                                                            Andreas

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