Re: Dutch questions

On Monday, May 08, 2006 4:39 PM CEST, Hemmo wrote:

> > Is "américain" really pronounced with a close vowel in Dutch? In French,
> > that'd be /amerikE~/, with an open-mid vowel.
>
> I wasn't sure about that one, but I now see it should have been a word with
> 'in' instead of 'ain'.
What do you mean? "Américain" is always written with "-ain" in French.
And "in", "ain" and sometimes "en" are all pronounced the same: /E~/.
Does Dutch pronounce them differently in words borrowed from French and not yet assimilated?

> > > I: leeuw
> >
> > That's funny. I thought this one was pronounced /le:Yw/. Robert & Van Dale
> > gives /le:w/ and in your dialect that's /lI:w/. /I:/ is a good compromise
> > between /e:/ and /Y/.
>
> In vowel + uw the uw is one sound (/w/) and I think ee is always /I:/ when
> followed by r, /j/ and /w/, if not at least it's different from the ee in
> 'beek' or so.
Interesting. Thanks for the info.
BTW is that a different phoneme or a different phonetic realization of the same
phoneme? I know Dutch is full of assimilations. Is this one?