Re: Constructive Criticism Appreciated: Vowels

On Wednesday, July 14, 2004, at 05:18 , william drewery wrote:

> --- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
[snip]

>> Whatever the actual pronunciation of /a/ in the
>> spoken dialects, they are
>> all surely low vowels, at least when contrasted with
>> /i/ and /u/. Arabic
>> isn't an exception to the 'universal':
>>
>> Ray
>>
> Thank you all. I've been confused about this for some
> time. I think a lot of it was due to the way some
> people right languages like Cherokee with e i o and my
> Lewis V. Tomas "Elementary Turkish" says Trukish "a"
> is pronouced as in English "sun" and "e" as in English
> "fed", which are both fairly close vowels in my
> dialect.
Yep - this is the problem with these "is pronounced as.." or "is
pronounced like..." descriptions, especially if the reference is to
English. They're just too ambiguous and, as you imply, misleading.

> Thus I supposed that Turkish lacked phonemic
> low vowels.
Nope - it has four   :)

>  BTW, are there any good grammars on any of the local
> vernaculurs of Arabic? I can only find info on te
> Classical language. Thanks,
>
I don't - but I fairly certain that the "Teach Yourself" series publishes
both a TY Classical Arabic and TC Colloquial [Egyptian] Arabic. IIRC
Egyptian is chosen because it's sort of not too different from either the
eastern of the western North African dialects.

Ray
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