>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?
You are right; there is no /i~/, I tried to find a word but indeed in is
always /E~/.
>> > > 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?
It's just a different realization of the same phoneme; as seen in 'alweer'
which has /I:/ and 'alweder' which has /e:/, both meaning 'again' but the d
was dropped so the long e was followed by /r/ making it /I:/.