USAGE: [e] vs. [E] (was Re: Two questions about Esperanto)

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 10:13:12 -0400, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 13, 2004 at 11:33:25PM -0400, Ph. D. wrote:
> > Allow me to quote Richardson in _Learning_and_Using_the_International
> > _Language_:
> >
> >    To get the sound of "e" really right, do this: Place two fingers lightly
> >    across your mouth . . . and say "they" very carefully. Feel how the
> >    lips and jaw shift position midway through the "ey" sound. That's
> >    because in English, the sound of "ey" is really made up of two sounds:
> >    "eh" followed by "ee".  Now practice saying just the "eh" without
> >    sliding into the "ee" sound. That is how you pronounce "e" correctly
> >    in Esperanto.
>
> And that is a description of the sound spelled in X-SAMPA as [e].
Hm? The sound I'd render in English as "eh" is X-SAMPA [E] (though it
can be [e] in SAMPA-for-English IIRC).

The "long a" diphthong is [EI] for me, or possibly [Ei] or [Ej], i.e.
its first component is [E], not [e].

> [e] does
> *not* mean "the English long-a sound".  It means "the English long-a
> sound without the glide"
Not for this English speaker. [Ej] is what usually comes out when a
generic Anglophone tries to pronounce [e], but I consider neither
component of this diphthong to be [e].

I believe speakers of Scottish English use [e] for this phoneme, though.

> or "the Spanish e-sound" - both of which are
> different from [E], which is the English short-e sound.
I thought that "the Spanish e-sound" was also [E]. How would you transcribe it?

How about French |ê| in |bête| or |nette| - [E] or not?

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

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