Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:
> 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]
?
My very limited experience says [xv_0] or the like. Would also seem more
expected diachronically.
> from _kv_ [kv_0]. Most Icelanders don't preserve that
> distinction, but doing it is considered elegant. For me
> it facilitates remembering the spelling! :)
[snip]
> > >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.
It could be just the non-representative subset of Finns I know, but I do tend
to think of Finns as slow-speaking.
> 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.
I've got [aU].
Andreas