[tied] Re: 3

Hello Piotr,
To be sure that I'm not wrong, I tried to find a similar example
in Romanian, an example that sounds similar :
I found that the spelling of romanian 'tri' is similar with :
'cri' like in 'CriS' ( a river in the Apuseni Mountains).

I don't know if this will help you or the others to 'hear'...the
sounds.

Regards,
marius a.



--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> 09-12-03 18:13, alexandru_mg3 wrote:
>
> > But in this case, once again, as a NATIVE speaker, I wanted ONLY
> > to say to you and to George (that you are not NATIVE speakers
> > of 'tri') that is NO DIPHTONG there...trust me, NO DIPHTONG

there, is

> > all I can say.
>
> One has to be careful: many speakers of English whose phonetic
> realisation of /i:/ in <three> is an [Ij]-type diphthong are not

aware

> of the diphthongal movement and will swear by all that is dear to

them

> that they have a "pure" vowel. We can't study your pronunciation
> directly, so it's impossible to determine who's right.
>
> OK, assuming for the sake of the argument that your self-

observation is

> correct and that really have a monophthong there, it's still clear

that

> the historical source of the monophthong is the smoothing of the
> diphthong /ei/, which represents the regular development of Latin
> <tre:s> in East Romance. Therefore, the whole diphthong-or-

monophthong

> controversy is irrelevant to the question of the origin of the

numeral

> '3' in Romanian.
>
> Piotr