Re: Diphthongs (was Re: 3 q's - X-Sampa)

At 22:33 12.2.2004, M. Astrand wrote:
> >Finnish diphthong are about equally long, whereas
> >in Italian the unstressed part of the diphthong is
> >much shorter.
>
>Do you think this has something to do with the unstressed part being in
>Italian
>i or u, ie. something close to j and w, whereas in Finnish it doesn't need
>to be a high vowel?
Yes, but compare Roger's comment.  Finnish *does* have e.g. /au/ and /ai/
but the u/i part does *not* become j/w.

>I'm not sure what I'm getting at, but it seems like it
>could mean something.
>Or does Italian have diphthongs with unstressed non-high vowels?
No, except for /ao/, but I think this is a spelling thing,
i.e. there are no actual au/ao minimal pairs.

Cf. also Icelandic, which actually distinguishes long
and short *diphthongs*, in practice e.g. /a:w/ vs. /aw/.
Not observing this is perhaps the single greatest fault
with my Icelandic accent.  OTOH I do distingish _hv_ [x]
from _kv_ [kv_0].  Most Icelanders don't preserve that
distinction, but doing it is considered elegant.  For me
it facilitates remembering the spelling! :)

>On second thought, perhaps the same does *not* apply to Mamqian. It seems
>everything I considered to be a diphthong last time I looked into them, has
>an /i/, /u/ or /y/ either at the beginning or at the end. I've simply
>*assumed*
>that all diphthongs are stressed on the first part, but that might just be
>me having a thick accent. Changing the stress to whichever part is not high
>would change the sound of the language, but not to worse...
Away from Finnish and towards what is normal in most
other languages (except Japanese it seems).  It's up
to you to decide if that is good or bad.


> >Also Finnish vowels, including
> >diphthongs, are longer overall than in most other
> >European languages (at least Swedish ;).  A Finnish
>  ...snip...
> >impression of Paula's pronunciation.  Her /'paula/
> >is about 150% as long as my Swedish pronunciation
> >of her name.
>
>Does that mean Swedish spoken by Finns sounds slow or stretched?
No, not excessively so, but their long vowels may sound funny
sometimes.  Generally the tendency not to make contrasts like
ptk/bdg, _u/y_, and to hack away excessive initial consonants
are much more apparent, and much more disturbing.

At 00:53 13.2.2004, Dirk Elzinga wrote:

>Some languages have falling (and I think rising)diphthongs with ï
>(barred-i
>[1]) and/or schwa-- Thai and Vietnamese spring to mind.
>
>ObNumic: Colorado River Numic has falling diphthongs with [1]. From
>Chemehuevi (this is the "official" orthography; <ü> is [1]):
>
>aüga  'new, young'
>ha'aü  'oh!'
>kwaü  'in (time); ago; from now'
>maü  'make'
>paüpi 'blood'
So do some accents of Welsh, i.e. written _au_ etc.
are /Ai\/ etc.  Also the Norwegian diphthong spelled
_au_ is /&u\/ for most speakers, and not a few Swedes
have /a8/ in e.g. _paus_.  I have /Au/, but that may
be influence from my German L1.5.

/BP 8^)
--
   B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Truth, Sir, is a cow which will give [skeptics] no more milk,
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                                     -- Sam. Johnson (no rel. ;)

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