Re: OT: Afrikaans

Hi!

Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> writes:
..
> >Hmm, I only know the diphthongs /e:I/ and /o:U/ for these.  Which
> >dialect would that be?
>
> I wouldn't know. I heard that once on TV but forgot to ask my friend what
> strange dialect that person used...
Strange?  Really?  Hmm, I found that to be the standard pronunciation.

When learning Dutch I unified 'ei'/'ij' /EI/ and 'ee' /e:/ because of
the diphthongised /e:/ and had to change my own pronunciation later.
I had: 'mijn' [mEIn] and 'been' [bEIn] and then after some weeks in
the Netherlands, I changed to [m&In] and [be:In].  And I definitely
never met any Dutch L1 person having a clear [e:] as in German.  There
always was an [I], however the people I asked struggled to insist that
it was [e:]. :-) I convinced all of them by contrasting German words
to their Dutch words.

However, I was in Groningen. :-) But almost all Dutch students I met
there where from other regions.

> >Really?  I always thought I heard /@Y/.  First unrounded (and slightly
> >different position, but that's not too far off), second rounded.
>
> Do you have an unrounded schwa?
Definitely. :-)  The X-Sampa /@/ *is* unrounded. :-)

*shaking head* Frenchmen... :-))))

> Because to my ear /@/ is also a nice
> approximation of the first element of the diphtongue (although a little too
> high), but schwas in French are always pronounced rounded, so my ear is
> rather biased that way :) .
*wide grin*

> Still, the first element to me sounds definitely like [9] (to give
> you an example, to me "ui": oignon sounds like [9Y] to me, but the
> plural "uien" most often sounds like ["9j@].
Right, I see that.  But I hear something more like ["3j@] there, so a)
first element unrounded, b) very close to a schwa.  But as you have, I
also do not hear any [Y] anymore there.  Hmm...

> As you see, I tend to hear the second element derounded, but the
> first one completely keeps its rounding).
Ok.  I cannot resolve that here&now since I have no-one around to
speak Dutch so I have to reconstruct all that from memory.

There are L1 speakers on this list, so let's ask them!

**Henrik