Re: THEORY: [i:]=[ij]? (was Re: Pronouncing "Boreanesia")

On Thu, 2 Nov 2000, Roger Mills wrote:

> Permissible pontification: (?) there is no tense/lax contrast in English
> before /N/ or /r/ (at least in monosyllables).  The vowel is neither [i] nor
> [I], but somewhere in-between-- usually closer to [I] I think (it is for
> me).
> I _suspect_ that may be true of Dutch too-- long/short vowels?  (maybe even
> German, but I'm on thin ice here.)   Are contrasting forms like "zingen :
> ?ziengen" possible?  "vier : ....?
[iN] sounds like a German accent, final [Ir] does not occur in
standard Dutch (and I think it's impossible, but I may be mistaken).

> Hmm-- there is ver : veer (far:
> feather), but is the /e/ of ver "short e" or schwa?
It's [E]. The only monosyllables with shwa in Dutch are "de" (common
gender definite article) "het" [@t] (singular neuter definite
article), "een" (singular indefinite article) and "ze" (unstressed
"she" or "they").

> Or is veer 2 syllables
> (as it is historically, veder)....(Pardon my bookish Dutch.......)
No, though vowels before /r/ are slightly longer than before other
consonants. When our eldest daughter was learning to write she used
to spell "oog" (eye) correctly, but "oor" (ear) as "ooer" because she
heard the shwa-like glide between the /o/ and the /r/. We think she
should be a phoneticist when she grows up :-)

   Irina

--
           Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
irina@valdyas.org (myself)     http://www.valdyas.org/irina/valdyas