>>I never thought about this in depth before.
>>All I know is that double-long vowels don't exist in French.
Miguel:
> That's precisely the problem. Most French people think that
> there is no length contrast in French. But they've never
> thought about it in depth.
They never had too. There is no real length contrast. At best,
it's a very small difference, and as I just said, can we really
expect a language so dependent on syllable-timing to open its
arms to double-length? It works against the rhythm of the
language. English might be able to tolerate it, but in French,
syllable-timing would be thrown out the window. Even so, we've
established here that it's rare if existent at all. So, this
already brings us to the end of your journey.
> That may be a feature of Canadian French, but here in Europe
> ê is _always_ open (like ô is /O/, and â is back /A/ for
> speakers making the distinction).
Alright, but it doesn't mean that it is "double long". Rather
I'm sure that it is nothing more than long, contrasting with
a vowel with a different quality like [e].
> The issue of quality (/e/ ~ /E/, /o/ ~ /O/, /ö/ ~ /Ö/, /a/ ~
> /A/) is an entirely separate one.
No, it seems to be intertwined with the examples you give.
I've heard accents which would pronounce "maître" as /metR/
and others as /mEtR/. I do know for a fact that "ê" _is_
pronounced either as /e/ or as /E/, dependent on accent.
Since what you're saying is dependent on the circumflex issue,
it's clear to me that what is at issue here is whether there
exists any speech area where a true three-way contrast exists
as you wish to dream. It's also an issue whether it's of any
importance to French in general (and you've already lost that
issue long ago).
I can see there being [E] ~ [E.] in some accents where "maître"
and "mètre" have merged, let's say, and [E] ~ [E.] ~ [e(:)] in
areas where an old pronunciation of "maître" thrives on but
with differing vowel quality, as is in fact the case for some.
We know that if a language only supposedly makes such a
distinction with one vowel [E], that distinction is quickly
destined for the slaughterhouse out of simplicity's sake. The
question is whether there is some remote fishing village
that yields the [E] ~ [E.] ~ [E:] that you desire and whether
they might be related to you. Well, I can't answer those
questions for you but we've already gone well beyond the
language we call "French".
= gLeN