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

On Tue, Oct 31, 2000 at 06:28:14AM -0700, dirk elzinga wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Oct 2000, Roger Mills wrote:
> > Faster might be
> > /"bory@'niyz@/.  Remember--ingrained US phonemics habit:   my y's are IPA
> > [j].
>
> I also note the typically American habit of transcribing the tense
> vowel with two symbols: [iy].
This is something that's been bugging me for a while: My phonetics textbook
says that in English /i:/ and /u:/ are [iy] and [uw], respectively. It claims
that these are diphthongs, and the second element is a glide. But how can
you glide from one sound to the same sound? I thought a glide had to be
something different from the other vowel (like [ai]), and it's my
understanding that [y] and [w] are for practical purposes the equivalent to
[i] and [u], respectively. What gives?


P.S. Another thing that really annoys me about this textbook, and others I
have seen, is that it uses the transcription /y/ for IPA /j/, and a few
other silly things that aren't the same as IPA. On top of that, my professor
calls *that* transcription system "the international phonetic alphabet"
which it is not, AFAICS (as far as I can see). *Fume!*

--
Eric Christopherson / *Aiworegs Ghristobhorosyo