Re: xsampa for vowels and diphthongs

Judicious pruning has taken place.
On Thursday 13 March 2003 11:17 am, Roger Mills wrote:
> Clearly, alien morphology is going to make a difference; as I assumed
for
> the Kash, you just press on regardless and come as close as you
can.....(For
> ex. I'm sure they have wider mouths/lips, and apparently a bit of
underbite,
> since /f/ and /v/ are pronounced with the lower teeth touching the
(inner
> surface) of the upper lip.
>
No, actually the Shayanan lisp is related to them having a cleft lower
lip (not a lot, sort of like a cat's mouth upside down). There's a
small gap in the front lower teeth, too, and I think the point of the
lower jaw is ligament or cartilage: something softer than true bone.

Rounded vowels are kind of triangular, but they do work.

And that's the first I've heard of f and v involving _lower_ teeth and
the _upper_ lip: it sure doesn't work that way in my mouth, (or
Shayanans' either as far as I know).

> > Phonemically, the vowel sounds are
> > (u" is u umlaut)
> > Ascii   Latin1  Center of gravity of the Sound  possible xsampa
> > a       a       hot,father                      a or A ?
> This seems to depend on dialect/region. See the URL given below.
>
> > e       e       pet                             e or E ?
> definitely [E]
> > o       o       Japanese o (no glide )          V or 7 ?
> Is this unrounded? I don't know Japanese that well.
This is unrounded. Or less rounded than most English o sounds.
> > @       u       hut (unrounded)                 @ or 6?
> @ is US, 6 (inverted a?) is more RP IIRC
>
> > i       i       hit                             I  or 1?
> [I].   You may have [1] (barred i) in the sequence [s..z] as in
"kisses", or
> in adverbial "just", but it does vary toward [I] a lot.
>
> > ii      ii      heat                            i: or i_i?
> [i] as in the "pure" Span/Fr/Italian pronunciation; [i:] is
lengthened, if
> that's what you want.
Sounds like [i] is what I want

>
> > u       u"      hoot (rounded)                  u?
> Confused here...the vowel of "hoot" is [u].  The umlaut symbol
generally
> indicates front/rounded (French "u" IPA and sampa [y]).  And if your
> language doesn't like rounded vowels, it might be [M] (same position
as [u]
> but unrounded-- Japanese "u" I think.
No, this one is definitely rounded. It's basically a vocalic w.

> > Notes:
> > I don't think my native dialect has a clean example of eu.
> No; if you can get a Spanish speaking friend to pronounce "Europa",
that's
> close.
>
Yes. My secretary uses her middle name, Maria, because she hates the way
Americans massacre her first name: Eulalia.

> OT something that has been intriguing me, though it's none of my
business,
> so you needn't answer.... You mentioned you were born in Connecticut,
which
> some years back boasted the first woman governor in US history, Ellie
> Grasso.  Any kin?
Her name was Ella, not Ellie. As far as I know there's no relationship
between my family and her husband's. I'm not related to the stock
exchange guy either.

Grasso seems to be a very common name: everywhere I've ever lived, there
were Grasso households in the phone book that weren't related to us.

Pulling things closer to topic with a hideous screech: Grasso means fat,
so we figure that there may have been a Grasso in half the villages in
Piedmonte. Could be the fattest family, or the skinniest (my
grandfather was skinny) or the candlemaker or maybe even a butcher or
some other loosely related craft....
>
>
--
Elyse Grasso