Re: The existence of low, rounded vowels

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. Apparently (according to
Ladefoged and Maddieson), the Amstetten dialect of Bavarian has this
vowel, but I can't find any other examples.

--
Daniel Seriff
microtonal@sericap.com
http://members.tripod.com/microtonal

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