Nasal vowels (WAS: [Re: [IE conlangs]])

John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:
> Tom Wier wrote:
>=20
> > Which is why Nik originally said that they're homophones in Southern
> > American English, because /E/ just doesn't exist before nasals, excep=
t
> > as an allophonic variant of /&/.  (Pronouncing a full /&/ before nasa=
ls
> > sounds positively foreign to me! :) )
>=20
> So you make "sand" like my "send", and both "send" and "sinned"
> like my "sinned", apparently.  (Of course, I may indeed be a
> foreigner to a Texian.)
I've noticed there's a tendency to reduce vowels when
nasal (or before a nasal, as in this case). Some time ago
a French speaker (Christophe? Mathias?) said that he didn't
distinguish the nasal vowels in _brun_ and _brin_.
Is there a physical reason for that kind of simplification?

I'm asking this because I'm doing exactly that in my latest
lang, Syngrais'l'th (a daughter of Drasel=E9q). There are eight
oral vowels (/i e a o u y 1 @/), but only five nasal vowels
(/a~ o~ e~ 1~ @~/), only two (/@~ 1~/) in unstressed position.

So, does nasality mean less distinctiveness?


--Pablo Flores

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