Re: troubles with IPA vowels (was: Leute)

On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 23:42:51 -0700, Philippe Caquant
<herodote92@...> wrote:
> To me, this difference between /e/ and /E/ is similar
> to the one existing in German between 'Reder' and
> 'Räder', for ex.
Yes (though ITYM "Reeder", since "Reder" doesn't seem to exist - if
you meant a speaker, he's called a "Redner").

Though in my idiolect, that distinction has been leveled and both /e/
and /E:/ are [e:], except in very careful speech, to make a
distinction.

Another minimal pair, which isn't minimal in my ordinary spoken
language, is "Bären" vs. "Beeren" (bears vs. berries).

However, the distinction between /e/ and /E/ is alive, e.g. "beten"
vs. "betten" - but "bäten" would tend to merge with "beten" for me
were it not for the fact that the conjunctive is a higher register of
speech for me and is, therefore, more likely to exhibit [E:] than [e:]
for /E:/.

So I suppose I do have three archiphonemes /e/ - /E/ - /E:/ in my
German which, however, usually merge into only two phonemes /e/ ~ /E:/
and /E/. (If I've got my terminology correct.)

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>