Re: OT: Nasalization of French Vowels

En réponse à Muke Tever :


>I've also read somewhere, perhaps on this list or perhaps off, that Dutch
>also keeps nasals from nasalizing preceding vowels.
Only the "long" vowels (i.e. those written with double vowels when there is 
a coda consonant) aren't nasalised by a coda nasal. The short ones tend to 
be nasalised, although this is purely phonetic (and I hear that clearly 
only because I make that distinction phonemically in my L1). For instance, 
"boom": tree, is pronounced [bo(:)m], with an unnasalised vowel. However, 
"bom": bomb, is pronounced rather like [bO~m], with a nasalised vowel. It's 
actually quite a helping feature since in some people's accents the 
distinction between short and long vowels (or rather between lax and tense, 
since it's a better description of the usual distinction made between those 
vowels) is very small, and I sometimes don't hear it. So the nasalisation 
of lax vowels helps a bit (I'm really happy that I have a way never to 
confuse "boom" and "bom"!! ;))))) ).

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.