Re: Questions and Impressions of Basque

Quoting Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>:

> --- Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> > Unfortunately, to my ears, German and Swedish has
> > each two quite distinct 'i'
> > sounds, as does English. The vowels in the initial
> > syllables of _Ihre_ and
> > _Irre_ differ as much by quality as by quantity
> > ([i:] vs [I]; approximately the
> > same as English "feel" vs "fill"). If the Russian
> > vowel is closer to the vowel
> > of _Irre_, the connection doesn't really work at
> > all.
>
> I think I must have bad ears. To me, the difference
> between "Irre" and "Ihre" is that the first one is
> short and the secund one is long. I never bothered for
> any other difference and never had the slightest
> trouble (also, I learned German for 8 years at school
> and nobody ever told me that there might be different
> "i"s in German, except for length).
I don't think it's your ears as much as your being French. I know Christophe had
trouble telling [i] and [I] apart, f'rinstance. But if they in eight years of
German tuition never mentioned the quality difference between long and short
'i', they must pretty much have ignored phonology.

                                                        Andreas