> On Sat, 24 Apr 2004 03:32:34 +0000, Richard Wordingham
Erh, let's compare Miguel's quotes:
Initially we have:
> mettre /mEtr/ "to put"
> mètre /mE:tr/ "meter"
> maître /mE::tr/ "master"
Then finally after Miguel evidently can't find the post
in question, we have:
> The convention is to use the half-long sign in mètre and the
> long sign in maître (/mEtr/, /mE.tr/ and /mE:tr/), but that
> of course amounts to the same thing.
Alright, we're slowly getting somewhere here. The issue that
I have is not really much with /maître/. Afterall, some speakers
pronounce vowels with circumflex differently from those without
circumflex, although most speakers don't. I pronounce "maître"
the same as the other two. Perhaps if I think about it, I might
be saying [mE.tR] as opposed to "mettre" being [mEtR] but I'm
not sure precisely. I never thought about this in depth before.
All I know is that double-long vowels don't exist in French.
I suspect that the above situation has more to offer than what
Miguel is admitting to. I think that for those that make the
circumflex distinction, "maître" is in actuality pronounced as
[me:tR] if anything (just as être is [e:tR] in such idiolects)
-- So, we have a _higher_ vowel than in /mEtR/ "mettre/mètre".
Can we call that a three-way contrast? I don't think so.
As I say, most speakers don't make the circumflex distinction
as far as I know, so we might get away with [mEtR] versus
[mE.tR] at best. In those dialects where this distinction occurs,
we might have [mEtR], [mE.tR] and then [me:tR] but this isn't
a three-way contrast, it's still two because /e/ is a seperate
vowel from /E/.
Any true francophones around?
= gLeN