Re: Questions about Schwa and Stress

David Peterson wrote:
As for me, most of my diphthongs have been done
>away with, since they were mostly in back, and those got lost when all my
>back vowels de-rounded.  But I still say things like "sky" as [skAj], and I
>can prove it by recording it on Praat, reversing it and playing it
backwards
>to show that the vowel is not the same backwards as it is forwards, which
>proves it's a diphthong--provided that we all agree that the definition of
a
>diphthong is a single vowel segment which ends in a different place where
it
>began?
What is Praat?  I love things played backwards.  A long time ago, messing
around with a friend's unfamiliar tape-recorder, I put in the demo tape, and
heard strange music and a Most Curious Language.  Sounded like fake Swedish
(a little sing-songy) spoken by a Russian (lots of palatalization).  The
most frequent word seemed to be [ojIr'its].  Eventually I figured out, or
was told, that the tape had somehow got rewound backwards.  It was English.