Final remarks:
Saaropean wrote:Of course a diphthong is two sounds.
But isn't that the phonetic level that doesn't count, just like the difference between the vowels in "
bad" and "bat" doesn't count?
Saar, when you talk about the quantity of vowels of a language you count what's at the phonemic level, what underlies phonetics... the difference between the [a] sound in 'bad' and 'bat' are caused by acoustics perception, and no language as I am aware makes this type of distinction, they are both the same vowel but one is like, miliseconds longer then the other.
The question was whether the 3 diphthongs in German can be considered phonemic vowels. The word "Haus" [haUs] (meaning "house") derived from Old or Middle High German "Hûs" [hu:s], so at least it used to be one vowel.
The diphthngos are only considered phonemic if they are a part of the word... what I mean: in /haUs/ (which is a one-syllable word - note for the slashes) yes, you do have a diphthong, because once you have ONE syllable, you MUST make a diphthong, because two vowels cannot be the nucleus inside a sylable, so one of the vowels must be a glide... the point I have been trying to say is that diphthongs can be phonemic but they are STILL two sounds and not a single entity... Is that clear?
Well, you could say etymology doesn't play a role, so let me show another approach. The plural of "Haus" [haUs] is "Häuser" ["hOI.z6]. Now what happens here? The consonant at the end is voiced, because S is pronounced [z], but [s] in final position. Umlauting and the ER [6] at the end indicate plural. What is umlauting? That's not just two dots placed on the stressed vowel, but a change of pronunciation of that vowel:
Yes, German devoices voiced sounds in word-final position.... it is a fact... then when you have the plural of Haus (s), it becomes Häuser (z) because that 's' is not between two vowels, so in orfder to accomodate pronunciation, the 's' is voiced so that it sounds 'z' (all vowels are voiced, and also, I believe, is there word-initial [s] in German?) - it is better to pronounce 3 voiced sounds than one voiced, then stop voicing, then starting it again, don't you agree? Umlaut is used in German for accomodating pronunciation, it makes sounds go front, once you have that 'er' ending, it makes articulations simpler to shift the [aU] into [OI] that are 'middlish' vowels and they are almost at the same level as that [6] is... do not confuse ortography... as you can see, written 'äu' is pronounced [OI], so the phonemic representation of Häuser is /hOIz6/ and has no /aU/ in it... understand now?
That's quite a radical change for a diphthong, isn't it? If you tried to explain it with the "a diphthong is just two vowels" approach, it would at least be complicated.
So what? both sounds change accordingly to German phonemic laws...
haUs > hOI.z6
a --> O ('a' which is a low vowel shift to a middle vowel 'O')
U --> which is a back vowel shifts to a front vowel, that's umlauting)
Another example: What is the standard pronunciation of the English word
"no"? [no]? No, it's [noU] or [n@U], a diphthong.
How come people are not aware of that? How come many English-speakers can pronounce [oU], but are unable to say [o]?
There must be something about that diphthong that makes it phonemic...
Again, you are taking
ortography for phonetic transcription...and once again, English is not well known for having very 'pure' vowels, is it?... languages conditionate its speakers not to be very able to pronouncing certain vowel sounds pure, so they tend to alongate the vowels, creating these diphthong-like sounds...
People are not aware of it because they were born speaking the language so all this process is automatic, no need for thinking... as I said, English speaking people have a hard time pronouncing pure vowels because the language does not have them isolated many times... same thing happens when you are learning a foreign language, as your language does not have some sounds you find it hard to pronounce... by the way, the phonemic representantion of 'NO' is probably [n@U] or [noU] and not [no]. NO is how you write it... please stop taking what's written for phonemic...
Nasalized? But why does the nasal consonant disappear? When I say "singen" in German, the I is slightly nasalized due to the following consonant ["zI~N@n].
But in Portuguese, the nasal vowel is no longer pronounced. In fact it is obsolete, because the nasality is clearly shown in the vowel. Why do you call this "nasalized" and not a "nasal vowel"?
In Portuguese, the nasal doesn't dissaoear completely, it nasalizates the vowel then it is dropped, however one can still hear a nasal ressonance (sound) just after the nasalized vowel... this is something natives can hear quite clearly but they are not aware of that too... and, if nasality is shown in the vowel why still pronounce the [n]? So it is dropped...
Actually I meant the opposite. What I wanted to say was the following: In Latin there was an ordinary (not nasalized) vowel preceding a nasal consonant ("mano"). During the course of time, the vowel became slightly nasalized, but it still preceded that nasal consonant. Even later, the vowel was fully nasal, so it was possible to distinguish it from a non-nasal vowel without looking at the following consonant. Thus the nasal consonant was dropped, and nasality was kept in the vowel ("mã").
So? I know that, I speak Portuguese and have studied Latim as well... what does that claim? When you are speaking a language you look nowhere, you rather listen to it
Latim: mano -> mãno -> mão: Portuguese (hand)
English itself... take the example 'half' as it is spoken by American, it does sound nasal... [hãef], however it is not even nasalized, what happens, is that people take it is a nasal [ae] but what happens in fact is that the [h] sound creates a ressonance when adjoined to [ae] (which is a very front vowel) and people hear it as a nasal ressonance, but in fact it is a tracheal ressonance...
The fact that nasal vowels can't form clusters or be followed by /r/ doesn't support your theory IMHO. In fact this has historical reasons (there were no vowel-N-R words, and in vowel-N-vowel words the nasal consonant was not dropped). I don't think it would be impossible for a new word in Portuguese (one that didn't experience the usual way from Latin) to have a nasal vowel followed by another vowel or a nasal vowel followed by /r/.
Attention here... it is not impossible that in some language that happens BUT in Portuguese that is impossible to happen... got it? Portuguese phonetic system doesn't allow such a thing to happen, so when you would have a cluster of nasals, they are not nasals... of course from Latim to Portuguese, in that V-N-V cluster, the nasal has been dropped (just take a look at MANO > MÃO, the nasal consonant nasalized the vowel and has been dropped!). Yes, it is impossible to Portuguese to have such a combination of Nasal+r.. when such a cluster happens, we pronounce /r/ as [R]...
Other argument: If you say any two (non-nasal) vowels can form a cluster in Portuguese, and nasal vowels are actually a vowel followed by a hidden nasal consonant, then why don't you accept the German diphthongs as something special? You can have any sequence of two vowels with a glottal stop in between (naiv [na"?i:f], Kooperation [ko:?OpERa"tsjo:n], beeindrucken [b@"?aIndrUk@n], geachtet [g@"?axt@t]), but the only diphthongs are [aI], [aU] and [OI] (plus [EI] in recent loans from English). So, according to Bender's argumentation, those 3/4 diphthongs should be considered separately from the others...
That nasal consonant is not HIDDEN, it is realized in the language as a nasal ressonance, so we perceive it to be there... In syllable theory, German allows only [aI], [aU] and [OI]...
it is a restriction on diphthongs that German has for some particular reasons... Portuguese has different rules for diphthongs, each language has different rules for them... If you take the
maximum dispersion principle into account, I believe (not sure, though) that German only allows diphthongs that are distant in the vocal tract... if you take a look at the IPA vowel chart, you will note that the [a] is a low vowel and [I] is very high and that [O] is a middle low vowel... what happens then is that German prefers to make diphthongs only with vowels of extremeties, so that it keeps a maximum distinctin and will not cause misunderstanding... what concerns to loans, even Portuguese has some that go astray the languages rules, but they are still new, so the language will either accomodate them inside the phonological system or will adapt itself to the new word.
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