Re: Brr (was: Re: A few questions about linguistics concerning my new project)
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, August 1, 2007, 2:20 |
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On 7/31/07, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...> wrote:
>
> Oh, and for what it's worth, don't the Inuit languages usually
> have a four vowel system?
Not usually, no. Proto-Inuit had four vowel qualities (the fourth being
schwa), but most modern dialects of Inuktitut have collapsed that down to
three (with a length distinction making it six, as in Arabic).
According to Wikipedia (the Arbiter of All that is True), only three 'lects
- Yupik, Qawiaraq, and Inupiatun - retain the fourth vowel. All three are
spoken mostly in Alaska. Going the other way geographically takes you the
other way phonologically as well; in parts of Greenland the /u/ phoneme
seems to be merging into /i/.
--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
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