Re: [YAPT] Judge my vowels

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 12:35:02 -0000, Christian Thalmann <cinga@...>
wrote:

>--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@Y...> wrote:
>
>> Sure they differ in quantity, I'm sorry I haven't been explicit
>> about this any more; their quality, however, is the same. Short [e] is
>> identical to [I]. The only reason why we transcribe the first vowel of
>> |defekt, prekär| with [e] and not with [I] is the orthography (there are
>> no comparable words with |i|).
>
>I often hear High German /I/ pronounced with a certain amount
>of rounding.  "Bitte" ends up halfways towards "büttö",
>especially in "snobby" speech.  I would expect this feature
>to be missing from the realizations of /e/.
The rounding of /I/ to /Y/ is a regional variation, though I'm not sure in
which regions it's used. Middle Germany?

==================================================

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 22:56:46 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
wrote:

>Christian Thalmann wrote:
>
>> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@J...> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Your [I] sounds very [e]-like to me!
>>
>>
>> Yes, it doesn't sound right here.  I have trouble
>> producing it isolated.  Even if the height
>> difference is very small, [I] should be clearly
>> more central than [e].  See the second recording
>> for a better [I] vs [e].
>
>More central?  So your /I/ is /I\/?
I don't think that German or Swiss German is ever a real central sound. It
might be slightly centralized, but I don't think so.

The article I linked claims that German [e] and [I] have the same tongue
position, but differ in jaw opening, based on films where the articulatory
movements could be seen. Their most important claim is that jaw opening and
tongue position are independent. However, this isn't researched profoundly
yet. I think it's not known whether this is relevant for perception.


g_0ry@_^s:
j. 'mach' wust