Re: Fricative Vowels

From: Richard Wordingham
Message: 55280
Date: 2008-03-16

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:

> I'm not horrified at all.
> the vowel is the words you point at
> is a kind of back unrounded mid vowel
> like the one in a(bout)
> but much further back.
> No problem,
> I can learn this language.


That's not what I hear listening to the Mandarin examples _zi_ and
_chi_ at http://clp.arizona.edu/cls/chn/chnpro/mvowels/mvowels.htm and
comparing them with _qi_. I take the point though that they're not as
extreme as the notations [z=] and [z=`] (or should that be [z`=] ?)
suggest.

I'm now wondering if that's the first vowel of English <particularly>
as heard [ptkllI] by our Danish members. I would syllabify that as
[ptk-ll-lI] with onset /pt/.

Richard.