>It was different from /E/ (the Balkan Romance reflex of Latin short /e/
>and /ae/). /E/ was
>initially the lower of the two, and its articulation tended towards "falling"
>diphthongisation (> /ie/). /e/ was closer and more firmly monophthongal.
>Presumably
>a bit like <last> vs. <lest> in some American English accents.
>
>Piotr
and
>Modern Romanian, like modern Spanish, does not distinguish between
>open /E/ and closed /e/ [Spanish /e/ tends towards the closed variety,
>I'm not sure about Romanian], but the difference is still present in
>Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan, French and Italian. (In Catalan the
>distinction is actually inverted: Romance /E/ > /e/ and Romance /e/ >
>/E/).
>
>Miguel
If written in German (for Alex), we would render that intermediary
"vierde" this way:
"wjääärdeh" (this triple-Umlaut-A is only to stress the openness and
difference from the last /e/; at the same time, this is how's pronounced
-- but up to 80-90% without the /je/ diphtongation [*]-- in regional
Romanian in the provinces of Banate (i.e. Northern Serbia included),
Transylvania and at least the Northern half of Moldova (the Republic
of Moldova & the Romanian-speaking enclaves beyond the Dnestr, up
to Odessa & al.)
This pronunciation is not existent either in Alex' own subdialect or in
standard Romanian (which one hears when listening the news on
radio or TV).
>Piotr
George
____________________
[*] but if diphtongation in this case, i.g. "vierde", then rather in
Northern Moldavia and in Banat (Southwest of Romania) *only*,
AFAIK. (OTOH, the /d/ in the variant _of these regions_ is rather a
palatal /g/, very similar to the corresponding Slovak, Polish, Russian
and I suppose Ukrainian, too, consonants - as well as the Hungarian
"gy".)