This answers my question from Message 264:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/phoNet/message/264

Piotr


06-08-03 23:42, Jean-Paul G. POTET wrote:

>
> I am the Frenchman you are quoting. :-)
>
> "Given that the International Phonetic Association (IPA) started in France
> (in 1886), this seemed rather odd." Richard WORDINGHAM
>
> The IPA was founded by French scholars so they took the non-nasalized vowels
> of French as the cardinal ones. Had it been founded by Italian scholars, I
> suppose they would have taken the Italian vowels as cardinal ones. Ditto
> with Spanish or Portuguese.
>
> Whether you take any of these romance languages, there is no schwa. The
> concept of schwa was borrowed from Hebrew, and developped for Germanic
> languages as a mid-central vowel, then applied to other languages.
>
> That the IPA symbol for schwa should be used for the "e muet" in French is a
> mere convention that, to me, does not reflect any phonetic reality.
>
> Jean-Paul G. POTET, FRANCE