Re: [YAPT] Judge my vowels

J. 'Mach' Wust said:
> The second sound file, however, reinforces my view that in
> German, the vowels of |bitte bete| have the same sound, though it would be
> [e].
In the standard language of Germany, the first vowels of |bitte| and
|bete| are not the same phoneme, and they differ both in quality and
quantity. In broad transcription, |bitte| has [I] while |bete| has [e:].
If these words had the same sound, they'd be a minimal pair. You could
question any number of native speakers of this language as to whether or
not they think they're pronounced the same.

Note that the national standard varieties of Austria, Switzerland and
Luxembourg differ in many ways from that of Germany. This may be one of
the sources of confusion here.

ObPedigree: My phonetics teachers were Max Mangold (author of the Duden
Aussprachewoerterbuch) and Ken Pike, among others.

-- Mark