Re: Questions and Impressions of Basque

Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> Andreas wrote:
> > Well, it's not too hard to imagine a sound change o>u>y>i or o>@>I>i.
> >
>
> Actually it is a lot funkier: o > o: > uo > ue > ui > i before a
> disappearing *I\ or *U\!
Yes, I heard smth like this. At least I don't know if there were any front
rounded vowels like [y] in Ukr. at any stage of its history.

> Yitzik:
> > Ukr. (y) is difficult to describe. The best approximation is [I], but
> > indeed it stands for Ru. [i\] everywhere.
>
> Perchance it is [I\]?
My first thought was Bingo! but then I looked at the chart and disagreed. It
seems more front. Draw a line from [E] to [i\] and divide it into three
parts. The first point will give you an unstressed variant for both /E/ and
the vowel in question, and the second one - a stressed variant of the
latter, while stressed /E/ is clearly [E] (more open in the West). So I
think /I/ is a safe approximation.

-- Yitzik
who doesn't like to talk much about natlangs irrelevant to his current
project

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