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Re: Uusisuom language (Online lesson)

From:Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Thursday, March 29, 2001, 5:47
At 9:05 pm -0800 28/3/01, J Matthew Pearson wrote:
>Daniel44 wrote: > >> Thanks for helping me try to clear this up. >> >> 'y' is pronounced like 'oo' in 'bOOt'. It is perhaps more rounded than the >> Finnish version. Just make the lips into a perfectly round shape and make >> the 'oo' sound. The german 'u' is a fair approximation. >> >> 'u' is pronounced like the 'oo' in 'tOOk'. This would seem to correspond >> with the 'y' sound in Finnish. > >The reason why people are confused is that the "y" sound in Finnish is >actually >very different from the "oo" sound in "took". The former is a tense front >rounded vowel, and the latter is a lax back rounded vowel. If you want people >to understand how to pronounce "u" in Uusisuom, then you should just drop the >reference to Finnish altogether.
Unless, of course, one of these symbols - {y} or {u} - is meant to represent the Finnish /y/! I must confess, I'm utterly & completely confused. Above Daniel repeats what he said in an earlier reply, namely: {y} = 'oo' in English 'took', i.e. [U] {u} = 'oo' in English 'boot', i.e. [u] This must mean that {yy} = [U:] and {uu} = [u:]. It seems to be going directly against making a language easy to have [U], [U:], [u] and [u:] as four separate sounds!! None of these, of course, corresponds with the Finnish /y/. At any rate, English 'u' in 'but' seems ruled out :) Ray. ========================================= A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language. [J.G. Hamann 1760] =========================================

Replies

Daniel44 <daniel44@...>
Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>