Re: [YAPT] Judge my vowels

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 00:18:13 +0200, Christian Thalmann <cinga@...> wrote:

>In the light of recent discussion about Swiss German
>phonetics, I acquired some insecurities about my grasp
>of the IPA vowels, in particular of the front unrounded
>persuasion.  So I thought up this test:
>
>1) I recorded a "vowel ladder" from the top to the
>    bottom: [i I e E & a A].
I would have labeled the first three sounds [i I_r I]. But I see you all
agree about the third sound to be represented as [e], so I guess it's me who
is wrong. 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].

The sound of English |bed, bet|, as I have it in my ear, would be just
between the third and the fourth vowel. At least, the Bärndütsch e-vowel
would. Likewise, it'd be either represented as [e_o] or as [E_r], which
would perfectly explain why it's sometimes represented with [e] and
sometimes with [E].

>2) I recorded a latter of similar words from
>    different languages to demonstrate that I do
>    distinguish all the vowels mentioned in 1).
>    Explicitly, the words are: beat [i], bit [I],
>    Beet [e] (High German), bed [E], Bett [E] (High
>    German), bat [&], bätt [a] (Swiss German),
>    Bad [a ~ A] (High German), Baad [A] (Swiss
>    German).
?? I'm confused: It seems to me that some vowels of the second sample don't
match with the ones of the first sample: The vowel you label '[&]' in the
first sample is labeled '[a]' in the second, whereas the vowel you label
'[&]' in the second sample doesn't occur in the first. Or do my ears cheat me?

I'd represent the [&] of the first sample with [&_o]. I agree with Roger
Mills that this sound isn't identical with [a] (as in standard German or
French or Italian).


BTW, I've found another IPA chart with sounds that I like better than the
Norwegian 'Sound reference to the IPA', the site that goes accompanies Peter
Ladefoged's Course in Phonetics:

http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1/chapter1.html

g_0ry@_ˆs:
j. 'mach' wust

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