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

At 19:13 10.2.2004, M. Astrand wrote:
> >
> >It should perhaps be pointed out to you that Finnish 'diphthongs'
> >are somewhat atypical.  They sound disyllabic compared to German
> >or Italian diphthongs.
>
>Ha! So this is the thing I should have asked about in the first place. Can
>you explain the difference any closer? And/or diphthongs in general?
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.  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.

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

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