Tristan McLeay eskribiw:
> All I can find in Russian is some music by Zemfira (so this
mightn't be
> indicative of spoken R.);
Pretty good, quite normal Russian. An Aussie listens to Zemfira?
Kinda cool!...
> Does Russian have a length distinction?
No. Even dynamic stress causes very little lengthening. Only heavy
reduction of unstressed vowels: /o/, /a/ > [V], [@] or even [@_x]
etc.
> I would describe front [a] as having some [&]-like quality (but I
guess
> that's my English speaking)
If that's about Russian, then /a/ indeed has [&] as an allophone
between two palatalized consonants: /p;at;/ [p;&t;] 'five'. (;
stands for _j here). But main variant is definitely central.
ObConlang: In Rumean, I'm still trying to figure out how five
Spanish vowels would map onto six Arabic ones. I need to preserve
/a/ ~ /a:/ opposition in Arabic loans since it is important for
positioning word stress, so it look like I'll need to split Spanish
/a/ into two sounds depending on stress. This may end with [&] ~ [A]
system like in Farsi...
-- Yitzik