Re: CHAT: Blandness (was: Uusisuom's influences)

Nik Taylor sikayal:

> > Romanian has b-unr (right?).
>
> My understanding of Romanian is that it only has back rounded, but it
> does have some *central* unrounded vowels, specifically a-breve,
> i-breve, and i-circumflex.
There's that i-breve nonsense again.  <rant>Repeat after me: Romanian does
not have an i-breve.  If Romanian *did* have an i-breve it would probably be
pronounced [j], which is definitely not a central vowel.  So let's not
hear any more nonsense about i-breves and unrounded back vowels in
Romanian, okay?</rant>

This is something like the 3rd time this week that I've heard someone
mention something obviously false about Romanian, so I'm a little touchy.
Just in case anybody wondered, here's the vocalic system of Romanian:

Phonetic:
i     1     u
e     @     o
      a

Orthographic:
i     î/â   u
e     ã     o
      a

The central column, if it comes out funny, should have i-circumflex
slash a-circumflex (there are two symbols) at the top, a-tilde in the
middle, and just plain a at the bottom.  The a-tilde should really be
a-breve, but the tilde is a standard e-mail approximation.

Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton

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