Re: How to Make Chicken Cacciatore (was: phonetics by guesswork)

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 09:22:46 -0400, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 08:13:04PM +0200, Philip Newton wrote:
> > Pronouncing |Räder| and |Reeder| the same (both with [e:]) is common
> > in Germany, at least in northern Germany where I live. However, this
> > pronunciation is not considered standard; prescriptively, |Räder| has
> > [E:] and |Reeder| has [e:]. (And |Redder| has [E].)
>
> So both quality and quantity are phonemically significant?
Quantity is phonemically significant only for [a] and [E].

Most vowels are in short-long pairs, where the two differ in quantity
and quality: |e| represents either [e:] or [E]; |i|, [i:] or [I]; |o|,
[o:] or [O]; |u|, [u:] or [U]; |ö|, [2:] or [9]; |ü|, [y:] or [Y]
(long vowels can be half-long in loan words in pretonic syllables). So
for these vowels, quantity is not significant since the quality
changes as well, and quality is the more significant change IMO.

However, |a| represents either [a] or [a:], i.e. the distinction here
is purely quantitative (a minimal pair might be [Ratn=] "rats" vs
[Ra:tn=] "installments (on a payment)": "Ratten" vs "Raten".
(Consonant length is not phonemic in German; synchronically at least,
it's merely an orthographic device to indicate the quality of vowels.)

And then there's the vowel which doesn't quite fit into that lovely
paired system: [E:], which can only be represented by |ä|; its
corresponding "short" form is [E], which is probably why the "long"
form [E:] becomes [e:] in colloquial speech (i.e. the same as the
"long" form of [E] which comes from |e|).

So you have a three-way distinction [E] - [E:] - [e:] in careful
speech, but only with this triplet as far as I can recall right now.
In colloquial speech (mine, at least), this collapses to [E] - [e:]
and the only place where length is significant is with [a] vs [a:].

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