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

Quoting "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>:

> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> >Quoting "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>:
> >>German [2] merges with [Y], being rather [2_r] than plain [2].
>
> [snip]
>
> >do you mean that German has merged /Y/ and /2/? As in, _möchte_ and
> >_Früchte_ rhymes? That would certainly not conform to my experience, nor
> >has a such phenomenon been mentioned in any of the phonological texts on
> >German I've read.
>
> _möchte_ has /9/ and is clearly distinct from /Y/. Between /2/ and /Y/,
> however, there's no significant difference of quality. Compare _rüsten_
> [rYstn] 'to set up' and _rösten_ [r2_r:stn] 'to roast': the distinction is
> in the quantity.
Quoting Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>:

> On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 23:03:18 +0200, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> > Quoting Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>:
> >
> > > "möchte" has /9/, not /2/ - perhaps "mögen" and "Mücken" is a closer
> > > pair to exemplify /2/ vs. /Y/ in the standard language.
> >
> > We would seem to be using different phonematization schemes -
>
> Quite possibly. Phonemic transcription, as opposed to phonetic, is
> always language-specific. I never learned a specific one for German so
> I use an ad-hoc notation.
I think we all perfectly well know that the symbols chosen to designate phonemes
are largely arbitrary.

What I still do not understand is J. 'Mach' Wust's original claim that [O2] and
[OY] are the same. This is not an issue of phonemics; the difference is
objectively physically measurable.

Strictly speaking, his subsequent claim that [2] and [Y] have merged in German
is equally unintelligible; based on his later post, he meant that the chief
distinction between the phonemes I'd indicate as /y/ and /2/ are one of length,
not one of quality. I therefore suspect that the claim re: the diphthongs too
was supposed to refer phonemes (presumably, then, prompted by a
misunderstanding of my earlier post about phonetic realizations of the 'eu'
phoneme), but I'd like to have it cleared up.

Quoting Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>:

> (By the way, to answer your second question, I believe that the "ä" in
> Swedish "Gävle" is [E] - an open-mid, front, unrounded vowel, IPA
> "epsilon".)
It's long: [E:].

A pecularity of Swedish 'j' and 'v' is that a vowel preceeding the former
(within the same morpheme) is always short, and one preceeding the later is
always long. The only exception I can think of in my 'lect is the loan _kaviar_
['kavjar`].

                                                         Andreas