Re: triphtong

Joe wrote:
> # 1 wrote:
>
>> In my dictionnary (a French dictionnary), at the word "triphtong"
>> (triphtongue) it says the normal stuff: a vowel that changes two times
>> but they give as example the english word "fire"
>>
>> Does fire contain a triphong? probably something like /6i@/?
>>
>> Before reading this, I thought that fire were /f6j@`/ and that English
>> didn't contain triphtongs
>>
>> But it is a French dictionnary from France so I can't be sure about
>> their English knowledge
>>
>> Might someone tell me?
>
>
>
> It's a triphthong in my British dialect.  [fAi@].  In American English,
> I believe it's more like [fAjr=].  Also, see 'hour' [aU@], IME.
That sounds about right, but I think the typical American "long i" is
more like [AI] or [aI]. In my variety of American English (mainly
Michigan-based with idiosyncrasies), words like "fire" have the same
vowel as words like "fight" (mainly words with voiceless stops at the
end of a syllable, with a couple of odd exceptions like "tiger" and
"spider"), which is shortened and raised (more like [6I]). For me,
"hire" ["h6I.r\=] and "higher" ["hAI.r\=] form a minimal pair, and
"hour" ["6U.r\=] rhymes with "tower" ["t6U.r\=]. All of these words feel
disyllabic to me (unlike "lair" ["lE:\r\], which contrasts with
disyllabic "layer" ["leI.r\=]).

But as far as whether English contains triphthongs, it depends on the
variety of English and the definition of triphthongs. A word like "few"
might be phonemicized as /fjuw/; is that /juw/ a triphthong? It does
seem to me that in my pronunciation it's something like ["fj1u] (a
slight exaggeration, but more that than anything like ["fju:], which
sounds like a foreign accent). A better illustration of triphthongs
would probably be something like Thai, which I believe has things like
[uaj] and [1aj], but English "fire" is fine if the editors of the
dictionary were thinking of the British variety.

Strangely, I can't seem to come up with a solid example from my
conlangs, but I'm pretty certain one of them has a word "rinnaoj" (where
the "aoj" is a single syllable). This may have been Lyzantura, which
isn't well documented.

Oh wait, Kisuna seems to have numerous examples of triphthongs, such as
"kaiu" (exist) and "niau" (easy). But it's not clear whether I intended
them to be monosyllabic....