Re: E and e

From: "Roger Mills" <romilly@...>

> French:
> anything written é (e-acute)
> anything written è (e-grave) as in "congrès", or sometimes "ai" as in
> "j'aime";  presumably both in "aimé, lèse-majesté"
> or "e" followed by two consonants-- cette [sEt], both in blessé [blE'se]
> (not sure about this....)(1)
I just figured out that Tech is called Tech because the French call it _le
tèque_ (is the e-grave necessary?)

> (1) a very confusing word if one's French is as imperfect as mine used to
> be..."dans la bataille il y avait 500 blessés" 'in the battle there were
500
> blessed??????'
"500 hit", I believe.

> German:
> [e] as in zehn 'ten'
> [E] as in Bett 'bed'
Hebrew (Tiberian and Ashkenazic) has /E/ _segol_ and /e/ _tsere_; also /O/
_qamets_ and /o/ _cholam_. The closed vowels are always long in Biblical
Hebrew; the open ones are either short or long.

Russian does have allophonic [e], with /e/ between soft (palatized)
consonants, and also [{] when /a/ is between two soft consonants. But no [o]
allophone I'm aware of, just one pronunciation of /O/.

Proto-West Slavic had this vowel system: a E e (< ie?) i 1 O o (< uo?) u.
Polish o-acute and Czech u-ring come from the same closed-o vowel.

Spanish, at least the Latin American varieties I've heard, has two
allophones of /e/: [E] in closed syllables and [e] in open syllables.
Likewise, /o/ is split into two allophones [O] and [o].

Pre-Classical Greek had /E/ <E>, /E:/ <H>, and /e:/ <EI>; also /O/ <O>, /O:/
<W>, and /o:/ <OY> -- but /o:/ > /u:/ pretty early. <W> is *supposed* to be
Omega.

Yoruba and its relatives have open and closed E and O. The open phonemes are
written with dots beneath -- but some African languages (not necessarily
Niger-Kordofanian) use IPA episilon and reverse-c!

Hindi and its relatives developed long low vowels /{:/ and /Q:/ from
Sanskrit /ai)/ and /au)/, in addition to /e/ and /o/.

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