Re: Love Those Double Vowels (was: Diving In...)

> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: Constructed Languages List
> [mailto:CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU]Namens SuomenkieliMaa
> Verzonden: zaterdag 3 november 2001 10:01
> Aan: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
> Onderwerp: Love Those Double Vowels (was: Diving In...)
>
> --- Dan Jones <dan@...> wrote:
> > >Maarten van Beek
> > For some reason I think doubled vowels in English
> > look ugly, but nice in Dutch. I also love the
> > sequence <ij>
>
> Really, you dislike double vowels in English?  For me,
> that is a small part of the mystique of a lang -
> whether or it can double or even triple (I can only
> think of Finnish which might triple, although they
> consider a and a/omlaut as separate letters but it
> still can look like 3 a's!).
> Hmm, I personally love doubles and triples as one
> might have guessed having seen a sample from my
> conlang, Vya:a:h!
>
> By the way, anyone know of a natlang which has triple
> vowels, and commonly makes us of them?
Wel, we do in some way. Not in root words, but it might happen across a
syllable break. A dutch word like "geëerd" (honored),
where the diacritic is not phonetic, but only included to indicate the
syllable break.

I love words with long vowel sequences... even though they are not the same
quality. A Dutch word like "koeieuier", meaning "cow's udder"... try to
pronounce that if you are not familiar with Dutch phonology.

We use a lot of vowel combinations in general in Dutch, though never more
than two of the same quality following each other (well, maybe in
compositions, but they don't count, and I can't think of any either). I
personally love the combinations "ieu",and "eeu" which are always followed
by a "w". "nieuw"(new), "eeuw" (century).

Maarten van Beek

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