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

Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
>
> Regarding the Turkish back-unrounded sound, written as {dotless-i}, I'm
> finding its existence rather odd; I thought languages with front rounded
> vowels (which Turkish has - {ö} and {ü}) wouldn't generally have back
> unrounded too.
It's not common, but it does occur.  It's due to vowel harmony, back
vowels being pulled forward kept their rounding, and front vowels being
pulled backward kept their unrounding.

Actually, back-unrounded is pretty rare anyway.

> And more about back-unrounded vowels, and their position in Westerners'
> phonetic knowledge: English just happens to have two back-unrounded vowel
> phonemes, /V/
/V/, in my dialect, is *central*, not back.  I think that's how it is in
most dialects.  Actually, my dialect makes no distinction between /V/
and /@/, except that /@/ is much shorter.

> and /Q/
That's low-back unrounded, right?  I have that.

> and speaks of back-unroundeds as if they were something very foreign.
Non-low, they are.

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