Re: Origin of Estonian /7/

Trebor Jung wrote:
> Merhaba!
>
> In the Estonian language article at Wikipedia, it is said that Estonian o~
> is /1/ ("a high, central, unrounded vowel"). In the Estonian textbook I got
> from the library, o~ was defined as "somewhere between the 'i' in 'pit'
> [/I/, I assume] and 'u' in 'put' [/U/, I assume]" (? I'll have to take the
> book out agaim). Thoughts, anyone? Where does /1/ come from?
It's possible that /1/ is the closest representation in SAMPA. I notice
the Wikipedia article mentions SAMPA rather than X-SAMPA. But if the
Estonian sound is between /I/ and /U/, it would probably be something
like /I\/ or /U\/, which don't have IPA symbols and only exist in
X-SAMPA as far as I know.

I haven't actually heard Estonian, but I'd guess that o~ probably isn't
very close to one of the cardinal vowels, and there seems to be quite a
bit of variation in the pronunciation of non-cardinal vowels from one
IPA web site to another. It might also be a matter of tradition, like
how the English "short u" is traditionally written with inverted v, even
though it's not much like an unrounded open-mid back vowel (a sound that
occurs in Vietnamese) in most typical English dialects. Dutch short "u"
is often transcribed as [9] (a rounded open-mid front vowel, o-e
ligature), but doesn't sound much like that in any recordings I've heard.

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