Re: The fourteen vowels of English?

On Sat, 4 Sep 2004 09:36:43 +0100, Joe <joe@...> wrote:

>J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
>
>>Since you've included /Aj@/, why not include /aw@/ as in "sour"? Though I
>>don't really understand why these are so often analyzed as one (compound)
>>vowel sound and not as /Aj, aw/ + /@/.
>
>They are a tripthong.  It's just the way they're pronounced, I
>suppose.Both [Aj@] and [Aw@] are heading towards [A:], however, as is
>the trend today(Monopthongising dipthongs/tripthongs).  Hence, /O:/,
>/O@/ and /U@/ are merged in my dialect, what was originally [E@] is
>[E:], and [I@] is quite often [I:]. (especially finally - ear, year).
Triphthongs, yes, I have some trouble with this notion since to me, it feels
very obvious that the three vowel sounds should be in the same syllable in
order to form a triphthong, just like the two vowels of a diphthong must be
in the same syllable in order to form a diphthong.

I know that some speakers actually pronounce words like _fire, sour_ in one
syllable, but I always suspect that these speakers don't have triphthongs. I
think of the real triphthong pronunciation to be quite similar to the one of
the German words _Haie, baue_ [haj@, baw@] (at least in the r-dropping
dialects of English), and I think it's quite obvious that these German words
are always considered to be compound of a diphthong + schwa.

What I'd consider triphthongs are sounds like Spanish _buey_ 'ox' or Bernese
Alemannic _Schueu [Su@_ˆw].


>>I guess you merge the sounds of "war" and "door"?
>
>Almost everyone does.  And that of 'pour'.
_war_: /wOr/, _door_: /dor/, _pour_: ???


g_0ry@_ˆs:
j. 'mach' wust

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