Re: triphtong

Quoting Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>:

> Hi!
>
> Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> writes:
> >...
> > The triphthong, when used, in _fire_ is a falling one; the vowel is
> > /a/ (or some similar low, central vowel) then the tongue glides
> > towards [I] before moving to the central [@] position. Triphthongs
> > more typically IMO begin are a combo of rising diphthong & falling
> > diphthongs and better examples are Italian words like: _suoi_ "his/
> > her" (masc.pl.) and _miei_ "my" (masc.pl.)
>
> Ah, yes, those are triphthongs indeed!  Now that you say it, Mandarin
> has a few: e.g. -[wEI] in 'shui' - 'water' (|ui| is a misleading
> spelling) and -[waI] in 'kuai' etc.
Is it known why they chose |ui| rather than |uei| or something else more
intuitive?

                                                       Andreas

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