Questions tagged [vowels]
Those speech sounds made with open, unrestricted vocal tracts, in contrast to consonants.
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How do other cultures categorize phonemes?
I don't know where it came from, but the "west" at least as I have learned, came up with the idea of "vowels" and "consonants" at some point, and we just go with that ...
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Why isn't the American r considered a vowel?
As a native American English speaker from the Northwest, whenever I isolate the r in words like "right" or "rope" it's always /ɚ/, the same as the r in words like "first" ...
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A better rule for Canadian Raising
I'm a teenager from Chicago with a pretty standard contemporary Midwestern/General American accent (not distinctly Chicago). I'm interested in the phonetic phenomenon of Canadian Raising, in which ...
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In languages that allow vowel hiatus, what rules prevent the formation of words consisting only of four or more consecutive syllabic vowels?
For those who came in late, vowel hiatus is a common term for the occurrence of consecutive vowel sounds each of which serves as the nucleus of a syllable. For example, in the word “chaotic” we see ...
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How did Otto Jespersen figure out the Great Vowel Shift?
How did Otto Jespersen figure out the Great Vowel Shift?
Surely, there were no pronunciation audio recordings available.
How did he know how British people had pronounced vowels centuries ago?
Have ...
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What's the geographic distribution of the father/bra split in American English?
In most American English dialects with the father/bother merger, the bother vowel (originally /ɔ/) unrounds, lowers, and merges into the father vowel (originally /ɑ/), with the end result being /ɑ/, ...
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Where is the father vowel found in English?
I was just wondering what words have the father vowel /ɑː/ in accents without the father-bother merger or the trap-bath split. My own accent (Australian English) has the trap-bath split so I can't ...
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What is the difference between two symbols: /i/ and /ɪ/?
Please tell me the difference between two Short Symbols sounds, /i/ vs. /ɪ/.
If there is no difference so why do both of them exist in Cambridge dictionary?
In its page pronunciation symbol there is ...
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Is the sound change /y/ > /i/ more common than /y/ > /u/? Are there any good examples of /y/ shifting to /u/?
Front rounded vowels are somewhat uncommon. If we focus on the high front rounded vowel /y/ and consider cases where it was lost, it seems most likely to shift to /i/ by losing its rounding or to ...
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is schwa a phoneme in English?
or is it simply an unstressed allophone of unstressed lax vowels? I'm curious because I've heard some people claim that [ə] is not a phoneme and it is just a reduced allophone of all the unstressed ...
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Why does /ɑ/ sounds so similar to [ɔ]?
For example, the /ɑ/ in the audio examples on this site and in this recording of the GenAm pronunciation of the word "cot" sounds very [ɔ]-like to my ears.
my native Georgian language has /ɑ/...
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Are syllable-timed languages with reduced vowels a thing?
the wiki article on syllable-timed languages says the following
Syllable-timed languages tend to give syllables approximately equal prominence and generally lack reduced vowels.
Are there any ...
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Is it useful to render French /i y u/ and /j ɥ w/ as allophones?
Because /i y u/ behave so differently to the other French vowels /ɛ ɑ œ ɔ/, which all have tense and nasal variants, while also being symmetrical to the semivowels /j ɥ w/, it is attractive to render ...
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I have been reconstructing Austro-Thai but the vowels are inconsistent
I have been reconstructing Austro-Thai believing it to be a rather easy undertaking and it mostly was, the consonants between the two language families line up rather well only with occasional ...
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why pronunciations of cardinal vowel No.4 [a] are so different?
The cardinal vowel No.4 [a] pronounced by Daniel Jones and some other linguistics sounds more like /æ/ as in cat.
but this cardinal vowel pronounced in the IPA website(by 4 speakers) sounds more like ...
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can a sibilant consonant like /s/ and /ʃ/ cause centralization of a following vowel?
As a native speaker of Georgian I recently noticed that in my idiolect the sibilants like /ʃ/ /s/ can make vowels /i/ and /ɑ/ sound more 'centralized', for example: /ʃiʃi/, "fear". and /...
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Does double tone mean long vowel?
After looking into the IPA for some words in tonal languages, I am starting to see things like ăn (Vietnamese), which are transcribed with two like tone marks, like ʔan˧˧. What does it mean when two ...
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What is the difference between [j w] and [i̯ u̯]?
The symbols [i̯] and [u̯] always confused me, like what makes them different from [j] and [w]?
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What would /ɯ/ most likely be replaced by? [closed]
If a language was borrowing words from another language that has /ɯ/, what would the first language possibly substitute it with?
Borrowing language phonology -
Consonants:
m n ɲ p b t d c ɟ k g ts dz ...
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Ioticism in Greek
Are there any good theories about what motivated the pervasive ioticism that developed between ancient Greek and modern Greek? Are there any other languages that went through analogous changes?
The ...
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Glottal approximate and rhotic consonants and R-colored vowels
Is there some reason why the consonant "r" can't simply be a glottal approximate and "er" be the corresponding vowel?
This would explain why different r's can be produced with the ...
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Confusion about compression vs. protrusion in rounded vowels
I'm making a song-synthesizing software, so I built some models about human speech, and I'm testing them. But it turns out there is an obstacle. I seem to have misunderstood how vowels are rounded.
I ...
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IPA confusion, difference between these vowels?
I am having trouble hearing the difference between these vowels based on this website for the IPA and would appreciate if someone could tell me the differences and how to pronounce them.
ʊ and ø
ə ...
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Wikipedia sound samples: vocal fry?
In seems to me that in Wikipedia's sound samples for the vowel sounds, there's often some vocal fry, especially in the back vowels. Vowels like ɑ
æ
ä
e and to a lesser extent:
ɤ
o
ɜ
œ. Do you concur? ...
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What are the best ways to learn to distinguish vowels?
Apologies if this question is redundant. It seems pretty basic, but I couldn't find a post that seemed relevant. If there is one, please forward it!
My question is "What are the most effective ...
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Is there an android app that adds short vowels to Persian texts?
I found an app for Arabic.
But is there an app or maybe a website for Persian too?
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Corsican vowels
In Corsican, some vowels are nasalized before a nasal consonant in the same syllable. What do these vowels have in common? Here are some examples:
'prin.tʃi.pe = prince
'fun.gu = mushroom
'ãn.ku = ...
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Pre-fortis clipping of /n/
Pre-fortis clipping is usually defined as operating on vowels. See, for example, John Wells’s blog post on the subject. But at least in my idiolect (Northern English-influenced RP), in the environment ...
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Do all semivowels have vowel equivalents, and vice versa?
I realise this is likely to be highly theoretical, as in “there could be such sounds but they aren’t phonemic in any language”. But I have a burning curiosity, and I’m hoping that there’s a concrete ...
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A language without consonants
I know that Rotokas language has fewer consonants than most (all?) languages. But I haven't been able to find a language that has no consonants (whether phonemic or phonetic). Does such a language ...
user30668
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What do these diagrams of vowels actually represent?
I've heard many times that spoken language is subjected to variations and we never make the exact same sound when we speak, even for the same word. If that's the case, how can you be so exact about ...
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Fewest number of vowels in a Germanic language?
Yiddish has an unusually small vowel inventory for a Germanic language, which are generally notorious for their large number of vowel phonemes. Probably under the influence of the surrounding gentile ...
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order of tables in the IPA chart -- is there a reason?
I was told by a friend that the order of tables in the IPA chart is not completely arbitrary, but has some motivation to it. In particular, that C tables come before the V table, as features of C ...
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What is the longest word without a vowel in any language?
(see edit below before you answer!)
I'm not a linguist, but I've always been fascinated by the fact that in Czech, there is a 9-letter word without a single vowel: čtvrthrst. It means "quarter of ...
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How is a svarabhakti different from a vowel
I recently came across the concept of "svarabhakti" in the context of the Gaelic word "Alba" (pronounced with a vowel between l and b). What I'm confused about is why this is ...
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Vowel change OE
My question is: comparing the words for the verb "hear" in Gothic(hausjan) and Old English(hieran), I became curious as to how did the diphthong 'au' came to be 'ie' in OE. I tried ...
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Origin of the English word 'tooth' being pronounced /tʊθ/?
According to Wiktionary, the English word 'tooth' can be pronounced as /tʊθ/ (as opposed to its regular pronunciation in RP of /tuːθ/) in certain areas of Wales and the British Midlands.
Is there any ...
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Could Old English /ea/ be a derivative from /a/?
"...This includes changes from the split between Old English and Old Frisian (c. AD 475)..." [Wikipedia]
The reflex of Proto-Germanic *au is spelled ea in Old English, but spelled a in Old ...
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Are there languages where vowels are always oral?
I was surprised to find in Zsiga (2020: 120, 125) a claim (by Donegan & Stampe 2009) that vowels in Hawaiian, as well as oral vowels in French, are always oral.
Unfortunately Donegan & Stampe ...
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Is [ë̞] another symbol for [ə]?
I know that the diacritic ̈ is for centralization and ̞ for lowered. So when [e] is centralized, it becomes [ɘ] and when lowered it becomes [ə]. See the diagram:
If someone gives me the ...
user30668
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Vowels in the second syllable of 'harmonic' and 'harmonious'
I came across a question on English Language & Usage asking about why the vowels in the second syllable of 'harmonic' and 'harmonious' are pronounced differently.
Harmonic → /hɑːˈmɒn.ɪk/
...
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Unmoving F1 / formant below F1?
I'm trying to understand some basics, hope this is an ok question.
Here's a recording of me producing /i/, /ɛ/, /a/: https://namakajiri.net/misc/i%c9%9ba.webm
nevermind the transition between the ...
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Epenthesis using SPE-notation
Suppose in some language the following happens:
when the stem ends in front vowels (i, e), then adding a certain suffix X requires j insertion (so it looks like [.. i j X] or [... e j X] instead of [....
user31981
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Has a sound change ever happened that voiced only stops in between vowels and not fricatives?
Has this ever happened? Can it happen? I'm a novice in linguistics and I'm trying to study sound changes.
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are there any languages that have sounds in diphthongs that don’t occur in isolation?
essentially i am doing an assignment for class in which we are building a pretend vowel system for a pretend language based on sound files we are given. i had two diphthong files with 5 other files ...
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Terminology about elongating a monothong or a diphthong by duration and tone
Which terminology is applicable when a monothong or diphthong is elongated in duration and with a slightly higher pitch? Would it be vowel breaking or fracturing or something else?
Example 1 (...
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How to differenciate the long vowels from the actual letters in arabic?
I'm learning beginner in arabic and I can't find a proper grammar rule to figure it out.
There is a lot of lessons on long vowels but they are totally disjointed from the question "How to ...
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What are the phonological rules or constraints for these pairs of words?
Mongol-Mongolia
Arab-Arabia
Babylon-Babylonian
Boston-Bostonian
comedy-comedian
colony-colonial
I know that the vowel in the second syllable is lengthened, but what are the rules or constraints for ...
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Is there such a thing as an L colored vowel?
I am wondering about vowels with approximant sounds. I am talking about a variant of a r colored vowel. An r colored vowel is found in words like earth. But, I want to take this a step further. Is ...
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Similarity between voiced glottal fricative and schwa sound?
I remember trying to whisper a schwa sound (mid central vowel). I thought that it sounded like an H sound. So, I tried to voice the h. It sounded a lot like the schwa. I wonder why. Is there a link ...
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