troubles with IPA vowels (was: Leute)

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 11:02:28 -0000, Christian Thalmann <cinga@...> wrote:

>> I note you're using [a, A] rather than the more common [&, a]. Why
>>is that?
>
>My "ä" is the same as the first part of the diphthong /aj/
>in Swiss German, French, English etc, which is always
>written as [aj] rather than [&j].
I'd say (northern) German and English (RP or GA) have [aI], French has
sometimes [Aj] (not as a diphthong), but Züritüütsch has [&i]. At least this
is one of the features of Züritüütsch which is easiest to remark for me, and
not only when they speak dialect, but also when they speak standard German.

You'd phonetically spell Züritüütsch words like _Räägel_ (from the name
Regula) or _fääze_ (to rain very few) with [a:]? That's unusual, but well,
the phonetic transcription is not as strict as we'd wish. To me, they'd be
[r&:gl, f&:ts@].

>In fact, the /E/ phoneme of Swiss German often sounds like [&] to me.
Whereas, in fact, I often wonder whether the /E/ phoneme of Bärndütsch Swiss
German isn't rather an [e]. The sound is quite the same as the one in
English _pet, bed_ (quite different from both standard German or French /e/
and /E/), and so the problem of it's representation is the same as well:
Some'd represent it with [e], others with [E].

>We might just be talking about very different dialects.
It's not only that, I fear, but also that we have different concepts of the
IPA sounds because we know different languages. That's a problem of the IPA
I don't know how to handle. Everybody's interpretation of the IPA, and
especially of the IPA vowels, is conditioned by the languages he's learned.
Apart from the unpracticable theoretical descriptions (for consonants, they
may still work, but not for vowels), there are only references such as the
ones given by Philip Newton ( http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/ipa/full/ ), which
are as well conditioned by the languages of the people who spoke them. Have
you listened e.g. at that [9]? It sounds rather like some kind of [@`].

>Some Bärner write things
>like "wörklech", which might make sense phonetically, but
>obscure the underlying German roots.  ZT shouldn't make the
>same mistake.
Instead of "würklech", that is. This happens, though it's more typical of
Lucerne, I'd say. You call it a mistake? For sure, it's not a mistake of the
writers, but rather of the writing system that offers two different signs
for almost the same sound, a confusion that goes up to the IPA level where
we have [2] as well as [Y]. Could it be that this distinction is a relict
from the time when there were no diacritics yet?

>Is the distinction between [y Y] and [u U] phonemic in
>Bärndütsch too?  I thought only [i I] were distinguished
>in writing, anyway.
/hYt:/ 'today' vs. /hyt:/ 'skins', /Sut:/ 'kick' vs. /SUt:/ 'rubble'. In
writing, /u, y/ might be marked with a dot below, according to Marti.

g_0ry@_ˆs:
j. 'mach' wust

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