Daniel wrote:Actually, English has 25 distinctive vowel sounds in speech.
Saaropean wrote:That's indeed not easy, because some languages distinguish vowel length, tone, nasality and other things...
And in German?
a, a:, E, E:, e:, @, I, i:, O, o:, 9, 2:, U, u:, Y, y:, 6
plus diphthongs: aI, aU, OI
more diphthongs with a vocalic R: a6, E6, e6, i6, I6, O6, o6, 96, 26, U6, u6, Y6, y6
Do diphthongs count? Is the difference between long and half-long [e] significant (it's not phonemic and depends on the speaker)? Do those [6] diphthongs count, being "correctly" pronounced with an /r/ consonant instead of [6] by many speakers? So we have something between 17 and over 30 vowels...
On the other hand, there are only 8 or 9 orthographic vowels:
A, pronounced [a] or [a:]
Ä, pronounced [E] or [E:]
E, pronounced [@], [E] or [e:]
I, pronounced [I] or [i:]
O, pronounced [O] or [o:]
Ö, pronounced [9] or [2:]
U, pronounced [U] or [u:]
Ü, pronounced [Y] or [y:]
Y, pronounced like Ü
+diphthongs: AI/EI [aI], AU [aU], ÄU/EU [OI]
And ER? Some dictionaries say it's [6], some say it's [@r]. I'd say it's either [6] or [E6]...
I think the diphthongs should count, because vowel clusters are not permitted in German (unless there's a non-orthographic glottal stop in between).
It's similar to the affricative question: Is [ts] (written Z) one phoneme in German and Slavonic languages or two?
Pittsboy wrote:We must draw a distinction between 'nasals' and 'nasalized' vowels... when a given language has nasal vowels and these vowels are phonemes, they are counted, when these vowels are nasalized, they are not counted into the inventory of vowels... this way, Portuguese has only 7 "phonemic" vowels:
[i], [e], [E], [a], [O], [o], [u]... nasal vowel sounds in Portuguese are rather nasalized oral vowels and not nasal in nature, the same happens to English...
ekalin wrote:Considering the distinction you said yourself below, at least [a] and the nasal [~6] must be distinct vowels, and not allophones, as they distinguish manhã and manha.
As for the others, I think they can also be considered distinct, as you could probably find cases where they distinguish different words, such as in "ponte" vs. "pote".
ekalin wrote:[i], [e], [E], [a], [O], [o], [u]... nasal vowel sounds in Portuguese are rather nasalized oral vowels and not nasal in nature, the same happens to English...
Considering the distinction you said yourself below, at least [a] and the nasal [~6] must be distinct vowels, and not allophones, as they distinguish manhã and manha.
**** Correction: I talked to my friend, and he made me think about whether a phonemic nasalized 'a' does really exist or not, I need to think about it yet...
ekalin wrote:As for the others, I think they can also be considered distinct, as you could probably find cases where they distinguish different words, such as in "ponte" vs. "pote".
Luís wrote:In European Portuguese, the vowels sounds are the following:
Simple Vowels
a, 6, E, e, @, i, O, o, u, 6~, e~, i~, o~, u~ = 14
Semi-Vowels
j, w = 2
Simple Diphthongs
aj, 6j, Oj, oj, Ej, uj, aw, 6w, Ew, ew, @w, iw, i6, ja, j6, jO, jo, jE, je, ju, wa, w6, wE, we, wi = 25
Nasal Diphthongs
6~w~, o~j~, 6~j, u~j~ = 4
Simple Triphthongs
aj6, 6ju, 6j6, @aj, waj = 5
Nasal Triphthongs
j6~w, w6~w, jo~j, wo~j = 4
Total = 54 entities
Pittsboy wrote:Saaropean wrote:That's indeed not easy, because some languages distinguish vowel length, tone, nasality and other things...
As I said above: when languages DO distinguish these features, when these features modify the meaning of words, then you have phonemes! On the contrary, they are only phones of the same phoneme. There must have a distinction between phoneme (a sound which is distinctive in a language system, which distinguish meaning) and phones (sounds which are not distinctive). When I say distinctive, understand as: a sound which differenciates a word.
Pittsboy wrote:When you say a language has x or y phoneme vowels (phoneme is what is distinctive) you take into account what people consider to be the Standard language. It is known that different varieties/dialects have different phonemes!
Pittsboy wrote:a) diphthongs are the combination of two other phonemes in the language; so they are not phonemes themselves; (it all depends on the criteria and author you use to count them)
Pittsboy wrote:b) vocalic (?) /r/: you mean what is usually referred to as 'coloured' as American English word-final [r], which combines with the previous vowel (as in 'betteR'), the vowel still is the SAME vowel, with an extra /r/ phoneme. Then, not a big deal out of it! You are combining a vowel sound + a consonant sound, and it is not one single sound, but two.
Pittsboy wrote:c) Are there words in German with different meaning but spoken the same way except for the fact that one of the words have a long vowelthe other one a half-long? Is the answer is YES, then you probably have different phonemes! On the contrary, NO!
Pittsboy wrote:d) you can have as many vowels as you wish, I am not arguing that... but the number of phonemes (sounds that distinguish meaning) are not that many... you have a small set of vowels which are phonemes and another amount of sounds which are not phonemes but are spoken in a language due to phonetic context, and those sounds are called allophones.
Pittsboy wrote:On the other hand, there are only 8 or 9 orthographic vowels:
[...]
What's the deal of it?
Pittsboy wrote:And ER? Some dictionaries say it's [6], some say it's [@r]. I'd say it's either [6] or [E6]...
Any phonetician will agree that they are two sounds, no matter what vowel you elect to use it with...
Pittsboy wrote:dictionaries tell you what phones there exist in a language
Pittsboy wrote:I think the diphthongs should count, because vowel clusters are not permitted in German (unless there's a non-orthographic glottal stop in between).
What you mean by vowel clusters not permitted in German? We are talking about phonetics and not about writting. You can probably not have the same vowel twice in a row, but you can have different vowels... or am I wrong?
Pittsboy wrote:German has 4 phonemic affricates (one sound and that distinguishes meaning)> pf, ts, tS, dZ
Pittsboy wrote:The /R/ phoneme (a big R represents an archiphoneme sound) can have many phones (sounds or allophones)> voiceless uvular, voiced uvular, uvular approximant, uvular tap, trill etc... I believe
Luís wrote:Pittsboy wrote:Luis, you are describing the PHONETIC chart of European Portuguese and not the PHONEMIC chart...
So what?
It was not my intention to write any phonemic chart to start with!
Pittsboy wrote:So what? If we are talking about the amount of phonemes in a language we count the amount of phonemes and not phones... that's the basic difference between phonetics and phonology... I cannot say that in Portuguese there are 54 phonemes, that's wrong! There are, instead, 54 vowel sounds... and this doesn't make of Portuguese the language with more vowels or so... my whole argument was towards that... I cannot say that Portuguese has phonemic nasal vowel because they are contextually nasalised, this way they do not count for the phonemes inventory....
Saaropean wrote:Of course. But some might say a Portuguese [o~] is just a nasalized variant of the vowel [o].
Of course. That makes the thing more complicated...
In German, many dialects have diphthongs where the standard language uses simple vowels and many dialects monopthongize diphthongs...
The glottal stop is not written and not perceived as a phoneme, but it is usually pronounced in words starting with a vowel ("ich" [?IC]) and in vowel clusters ("naiv" [na"?i:f]).
What I wanted to say: It is often not possible to say "exactly" how many vowels or consonants a language has, so one should be careful with the kind of ranking Strigo wants to make.
Pittsboy wrote:What do you mean? As far as I can see it, the [@r] pronunciation is an "ideal" no one uses, [E6] is to make it sound "more correct", and [6] is what people usually do, though some say that's "wrong".
Two vowels in a row only occurs in two cases:
- proper dipthongs ([aI], [aU] or [OI], in English loans [EI], but no others)
- two vowels pronounced distinctly or even with a glottal stop in between ("Kooperation" [ko?OpERa"tsjo:n] etc.)
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