Re: YAEPT:Re: Phonological musings (was: Announcement: New auxlang "Choton")

Quoting Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>:

> Joe wrote:
>
> > Andreas Johansson wrote:
> >
> > >PS A similar oddity is his use of "were" as an example of Elvish 'e',
> > >which
> > >otherwise seem to be monophthongal - the RPoid English I learnt has [we@]
> > >for
> > >"were". I suppose Tolkien's 'lect differed here; dialectal variation
> > >'tween
> > >[we:] and [we@] is, of course, easily believable.
>
> Is Elvish "e" supposed to be [e] or [E]? (Or both, depending...?)
Well, that's not entirely clear; Tolkien was a philologist, not a phonologist,
and, as this thread demonstrates, his phonetic descriptions were not always
unambiguous.

I unfortunately do not presently have my books at hand. The consensus among
Tolkienists seems to be [E], however. There's mention of /e:/ being more close
than /e/ in Quenya (but not in Sindarin) - perhaps a Germaniquesque [e:]~[E]
contrast.

                                                          Andreas