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

At 1:38 PM +0000 11/06/01, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
>Does anyone know Estonian? I know there are overlong vowels in that
>language, spelled with triple letters
I don't think that this is true. The orthography distinguished three
degrees of length for consonants by using two symbols:

        lage  'bare'            [lake]
        lake  'thin gruel'      [lak:e]
        lakke 'to the ceiling'  [lak::e]

but vowels only show a two-way orthographical distinction:

        sage  'frequent'        [sake]
        saage 'get.2p.impf'     [sa:ke]
        saage 'saws.part.pl'    [sa::ke]

Data is from Lehiste, Ilse. 1965. "Quantity in Finnish and Estonian."
_Language_ 41:3 pp 447-456. Lehiste also mentions in a footnote: "One
vowel symbol is used for a short vowel; standard spelling does not
distinguish between the long and overlong durations of vowels, both
symbolized by a sequence of two vowel letters."

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                              Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead;
therefore we must learn both arts."            - Thomas Carlyle

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