Re: Vowels?

Just a note on the X-Sampa: <R> is the upside-down small-caps <R> found
in French. The upside-down lower-case <r> found in English is <r\>:
/r\aIt@/ or /r\aItr\_=/, not /RaItR_=/, unless you want to have a French
accent.

(If memory serves, the British and American /r/s are slightly different...
I think the other one is more like /r\`/(?), but I don't know who's it is.
And don't shoot me if I'm wrong or anything.)

Tristan

On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> En réponse à Chris Palmer <cecibean@...>:
>
> >
> > No line need be drawn: [R] is a vowel, just as much as [i] is.
>
> But that's only true for Americans which have a rhotic dialect. British English
> [R] can only be used as a consonant (writer is pronounced there /RaIt@/,
> not /RaItR=/). Don't presuppose that what is true of our dialect is true
> everywhere. The line you so much want to draw is drawn at different places by
> different languages. So why drawing a line which is so much language-dependent
> when talking about phonology in general?
>
> > Traditional
> > grammarians have it that the vowels are "a, e, i, o, u and sometimes
> > y",
> > but from an articulatory point of view, that's not the case.
> >
>
> Of course not, since what you refer to is only an orthographic matter.
>
> Christophe.
>
> http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
>
> Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.
>

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