Re: Kyrgyz was Re: Zetowvu / Ezotwuv (new conlang)

Peter Clark wrote:
>         Just out of curiousity, does /E/ count as a tense or a lax vowel?
>The IPA
>seems to think it is tense, while the North American charts make it lax.
IPA [E] is properly tense. The exact qualities of a given language's /E/
sound may vary - that of English (most dialects at any rate) is the lax
counterpart to [E]. Since the tense-lax contrast here is rarely if ever
phonemic, in loose transcription it is perfectly okay to write [E] for the
English sound. Eg [tEn] instead of [t_hE_-n] (I think that's the correct
X-SAMPA rendering. Could be [t_hE_"n] or some such tho').

                                                  Andreas

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