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

On Sun, 8 Apr 2001 03:19:07 -0400, Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:

> David Peterson wrote:
> > But I know at least one person said that there was no [u] in Turkish,
> > so you know what those universals are worth.
>
> That was Japanese, actually.  Turkish *does* have /u/.  But it *is*
> unusual to have /M/ without /u/.  Supposedly, /u/ became /M/ because it
> was considered polite in the court to avoid lip-rounding.  (Tho, why
> that didn't also affect /o/, I don't know)
The Japanese I learned has unrounded /o/ as well (perhaps I'd better check
with some Japanese speakers the next chance I get). I also note that not
rounding makes it harder for lip-readers.

While we're on the subject of rounding ... it has seemed to me for some
time that the "rounded" vs. "unrounded" distinction is insufficient for
phonetic description, since there are degrees of rounding. Japanese [i]
as I know it is "flat" or completely unrounded, while English [i] only
lacks rounding (usually). Comments?

Jeff