Re: Leute (was...)

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@Y...> wrote:

> >And especially by writers whose dialect doesn't distinguish
> >the two.  I personally only have one /i/ phoneme in my
> >lect.
>
> Of course! Typical ignorance by conditioning of my own dialect.
When I'm writing Züritüütsch, I use my own dialect, not
someone else's, so I'm not ignoring a distinction I should
make.



> >In Bärndütsch, the distinction is clearly phonemic: |si|
> >"they" vs |sy| "to be".  The vowels |i e ä a| are all very
> >low [I E a A], so there is plenty of room left in the high
> >front area for another phoneme.
>
> I note you're using [a, A] rather than the more common [&, a]. Why
is that?

My "ä" is the same as the first part of the diphthong /aj/
in Swiss German, French, English etc, which is always
written as [aj] rather than [&j].  (The latter is how I
would write the Dutch "ij".)  It is also identical to the
bright "a" of French as opposed to the dark [A] of the
Accent Fédéral.  In fact, the /E/ phoneme of Swiss German
often sounds like [&] to me.  My mother tends to pronounce
English /E/ like [&], and doesn't even notice the
difference.  The "a" of Züritüütsch is clearly [A] beyond
all doubt (see Accent Fédéral again).

We might just be talking about very different dialects.
I'm from Uster.



> I bet that in a perceptory test, Züritüütsch /e, 2, o/ would turn
out to be
> practically the same as Bärndütsch /I, Y, U/ (again that 2-Y merger:).
Yes, the Bärner vowels are exceptionally low.  A Bärner
who studied with me even had [&:] for High German /e:/.
=P



> >'Mach', how do you write /9/ in Swiss German?
>
> Well, with the rounded front vowels, it's the same as with the unrounded
> front vowels which you've described (and with the rounded back vowels,
> too): The 'same conceptual space' is filled in Bärndütsch by a
> discrimination in the higher vowels: /y, Y, 9/, not /y, 2, 9/. The one
> thing I'm not sure about is whether Bärndütsch /9/ would rather be
[2_o] or
> even [2] instead of [9] or [9_r].
Is the distinction between [y Y] and [u U] phonemic in
Bärndütsch too?  I thought only [i I] were distinguished
in writing, anyway.

I wonder how you can consider raising Bärndütsch /9/.  If
anything, /Y/ sounds like [2], not /9/.



> I prefer the more traditional Swiss German orthography as proposed by
> Werner Marti to the more phonemic approach of Eugen Dieth, so I
write /y,
> Y, 9/ as <ü, ü, ö>, and eventually mark the first with a dot below (only
> for linguistic purposes). The Dieth orthography, which is more
common for
> Züritüütsch than Marti, suggests <ü, ö, ö> for /y, 2, 9/ and eventually
> marks the latter with an additional grave accent above. I think there's
> no 'codification' of the more traditional orthography for Züritüütsch.
Would you then suggest we adopt the Bärndütsch system for
Züritüütsch?  If you reinterpret ZT /2/ as /Y/ and spell it
"ü", you'd get "Ül"!  That can't possibly be din Ërnst...
After all, BD /Y/ and ZT /2/, although they might sound
alike, have different etymologies!  Some Bärner write things
like "wörklech", which might make sense phonetically, but
obscure the underlying German roots.  ZT shouldn't make the
same mistake.



> Does Züritüütsch have phonemic vowel length in all vowels
(Bärndütsch has)?

I haven't checked them all, but I think so.



> _Schwytzer_ and _Schwitzer_ is a Bärndütsch minimal pair for short
/i/ vs.
> short /I/!
Ils sont fous, les Bernois!  ;o)



-- Christian Thalmann