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

>Date:         Tue, 10 Feb 2004 20:14:30 +0100
>From: Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
>Subject:      Re: Diphthongs (was Re: 3 q's - X-Sampa)
>
>I *think* the difference is that both halves of a
>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? 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?

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...


>Also Finnish vowels, including
>diphthongs, are longer overall than in most other
>European languages (at least Swedish ;).  A Finnish
>short vowel is intermediate in length between a
>Swedish short and a Swedish long vowel, and a
>FI long vowel is correspondingly longer than a
>SE long vowel.
>
>Of course I have no measurements.  All this is my
>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?

>/BP 8^)
>--
>   B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)

- M. Astrand


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