Questions tagged [vowels]
Those speech sounds made with open, unrestricted vocal tracts, in contrast to consonants.
174
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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 ...
4
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1answer
91 views
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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1answer
104 views
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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4answers
7k views
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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2answers
396 views
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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1answer
66 views
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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1answer
522 views
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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1answer
148 views
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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2answers
169 views
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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22 views
Formant frequencies of regional Irish English vowels by female speakers
Do you know any research that show the formants of English Irish vowels by female speakers?
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3answers
91 views
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 ...
3
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1answer
98 views
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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1answer
31 views
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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1answer
45 views
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 [....
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1answer
66 views
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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4answers
161 views
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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0answers
38 views
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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1answer
92 views
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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1answer
56 views
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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2answers
1k views
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 ...
2
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3answers
187 views
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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1answer
186 views
Can Semitic (Hebrew & Arabic) roots have vowels?
To the best of my knowledge, roots in Semitic, both Arabic & Hebrew, do not contain vowels. They are purely consonantal at the base. I read this a couple of years ago about Hebrew in Levin & ...
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2answers
162 views
Unvoiced schwa?
I read about a the schwa being the laziest sound in all of human speech. This is because it just needs vocal cords and, poof, there's a uuuh sound. But, what happens if you take the vocal cords out? (...
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1answer
166 views
Why is the vowel speech sound (called “ash”) in “Tank” and “Cat” considered the same?
The vowel in "Tank" sounds more like ɛ to me, yet the IPA spelling for "Tank" (as pronounced in General American English) employs the ash [æ] to represent the vowel. The same for the word "thank" in ...
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1answer
33 views
Praat - window size larger than vowel
I'm doing an acoustic-phonetic analysis of read-speech in an American English corpus.
If we want to set a window/frame size (25 - 30 ms) to cover the majority of vowels in the corpus, but some vowels (...
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2answers
190 views
Why is the diphthong in 'say' and 'fate' /eɪ/ rather than /ɛi/?
When I say the word 'day,' I say /dɛi/, or perhaps /dɛj/. However, when I look at any dictionary that uses IPA, they always write the diphthong as /eɪ/. Why is this? Maybe my dialect of English (UK ...
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0answers
69 views
Does California vowel shift occur in bilingual Spanish speakers?
I know that recently there has been a lot of research done on the California vowel shift being a key part of a California accent for younger kids who have grown up there.
Knowing that there is a ...
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1answer
370 views
Voice pitch changing between languages
I speak English natively, but I have learned Spanish to a high level of proficiency and speak Latvian (still learning) with my wife who speaks Latvian natively and English with native proficiency (...
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2answers
176 views
Could the Ancient Egyptian Ka be pronounced Ki?
I am looking at the word /ki/ such as this 𓎡𓇋. However, I noticed there are some words/sounds like /ka/ (𓂓) which is one symbol. Typically you see the word for the "sun god of egypt" as Ra, but ...
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4answers
267 views
GVS similarity in cognate words other Germanic Languages
I am no professional Linguist (nor have I ever studied it) so there might be a straightforward explanation to this which I could't find searching in ordinary places.
I was analysing a few words from ...
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3answers
181 views
Is there good evidence for five vowel phonemes in Hittite?
The Hittite writing system generally distinguishes three, sometimes four vowels: /a i u/ and sometimes /e/.
However, I've seen it suggested that the language actually had five vowel phonemes, ...
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2answers
493 views
If Hebrew is written without vowels can there be multiple interpretations?
This may be a silly question though I am unsure of this is the case for Hebrew.
I know often the vowels are not shown in Hebrew in writing. Curious if it changes the words can be interpreted many ...
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1answer
2k views
vowels (unrounded or rounded)
i have a problem with vowels (which are rounded or unrounded vowels). Can you explain how to make a decide which is vowels? And which are tense or lax vowels?
Maybe have some rules or instruction or ...
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1answer
58 views
help with the sounds of words [closed]
when we concentrate on articulars sounds we don't think about how people listening to those sounds. How to decide are rounded or unrounded vowels and which are tense or lax vowels? and what clues are ...
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0answers
866 views
Does pre-fortis clipping only operate within a syllable? If not, what is its actual scope?
English is known to have a phenomenon of "pre-fortis clipping": in certain contexts, vowel and sonorant phonemes before a fortis/voiceless consonant are realized with shorter duration than the same ...
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1answer
247 views
How to measure auditory distances between vowels
(Followup to this question, also related to this answer.)
The Handbook of the International Phonetic Association (1999: 11–2) defines the values of cardinal vowels as follows:
[T]wo fully front ...
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1answer
196 views
Why were the formants of high and back vowels difficult to obtain? And why not anymore?
I was reading the second chapter of Three Areas of Experimental Phonetics by Peter Ladefoged (1967), in which he summarizes the studies he conducted in the 1950s and 1960s which demonstrated practical ...
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1answer
194 views
How Thai Vowels Work
I am trying to put together a worksheet to understand how the Thai script works. I am looking here and here. The wiki page seems to suggest that there are two types of symbols: combining characters ...
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1answer
1k views
How Hebrew Vowels Work [closed]
I am trying to find a document that clearly explains how to apply Hebrew vowels (and what all the combining characters are for Hebrew vowels), but I haven't been able to find anything after a few ...
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2answers
1k views
Why is vowel phonology represented in a trapezoid instead of a square?
Given that the internal area of the human mouth is approximately a square, why the vowels pronunciation chart is usually represented by a trapezoid?
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1answer
3k views
Which language has the most vowel phonemes?
Which language has the largest number of vowels with minimal pairs?
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1answer
209 views
The TRAP vowel: a or ä?
If my mouth is open and my tongue is completely relaxed, do I make an [a] or an [ä]?
Which one is more common for the TRAP vowel in British English?
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1answer
486 views
The German vowel “a” changes to the English “i”
What is the name of a sound shift law under which the German vowel "a" changes to the English "i", e.g.
Macht -> might;
Nacht -> night
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1answer
109 views
Interpreting formant intensity
I was wondering whether there is any practical way to tell whether differences in formant intensity are due to different harmonics in the source or different formants in the filter. Is there any data ...
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1answer
149 views
Formants - beyond F2
I have read that for front vowels, the cavity behind the lips (I think this must correspond to the space between the lips and the hump of the tongue) is F3, whereas for back vowels it is F2.
In that ...
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1answer
205 views
What is the maximum number of IPA diacritics that can be added on a vowel?
What would the symbol look like, and how would it sound like? E.g. a long rhotacized nasalized vowel with tone?
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3answers
242 views
Given both a word and the corresponding IPA, how to match/map the letters together?
Given both the word and the corresponding IPA equivalent, is there any stable algorithm for mapping the letter of each word to the IPA letter?
For example, given close-quote and IPA kloʊzkwoʊt -- I'd ...
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2answers
203 views
Dataset/Database similar to WALS in Vowel/Phonology
I am wondering if there is any database similar to The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS)(https://wals.info/). In the case that it is specifically more geared towards phonological aspects of ...
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2answers
201 views
If there is really an /ə/ between /dəɹ/ in “quandary”
In considering words with -er ending like "quandary" /ˈkwɑːn.dəɹɪ/, it seems like to me there is no difference between that IPA /ˈkwɑːn.dəɹɪ/ and /ˈkwɑːn.d.ɹɪ/, or "quand-ree". The [r] is like "rrrr" ...
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1answer
152 views
How to annotate the difference between blended vowels and non-blended vowels
Similar to this question about consonants, I'm wondering how you annotate with IPA (or any other system if IPA doesn't support it) the difference between blending vowels together (morphing between ...
