Op 6/06/2021 om 13:22 schreef Arnaud Fournet:

>>> In theory, inherited phonology would mean aimai is émé, but aimais is émè,
>> Not èmé and èmè? We were taught (in 1966) to pronounce the more common
>> words aimer, aimez, aimé and aimée all as èmé.
> This sounds quite incorrect, both synchronically and diachronically.
>

èmé is standard and generally applied in Belgium, and in most of what I
hear from France.

--
guido wugi

Op 6/06/2021 om 7:53 schreef Ruud Harmsen:
> Sat, 5 Jun 2021 19:52:17 -0700 (PDT): Dingbat
> <ranjit_mathews@yahoo.com> scribeva:
>> How about a closed syllable spelled with <é>? I've heard [depAtma] from
>> an Anglophone affecting French pronunciation. Would French listeners
>> flag his [e] as wrong?
>
> It isn't an open syllable.

You mean it isn't a closed syllable (spelled with é)

> Départment is dé-part-ment, the syllables

It is département. Is C@ a syllable in French? Dé-part-ment or
Dé-par-t@-ment?

> are open-closed-closed, the vowels close (high), neutral, back
> nasalised, [depaRtmA~].
>

--
guido wugi

Op 5/06/2021 om 17:22 schreef Christian Weisgerber:
> On 2021-06-04, António Marques <antonioprm@sapo.pt> wrote:
>
>> In the french I was taught, <ai> was just the same as <è>. I've since been
>> made aware that is often the same as <é>, but not the rules for that. This
>> looks like as good as time as any other to inquire about those.
>> What are the rules? Quelles sont-elles, les règles?
>
> That is part of the bigger question how the mid-close /e, ø, o/ and
> mid-open vowels /ɛ, œ, ɔ/ are distributed. The answer to that is
> made complicated by regional differences--don't trust the Belgian!--and

This before telling about the same as I did, but learnedlier.

> the fact that the descriptive rules from 1900 have fossilized into
> prescriptive ones.
>
> Based on Fagyal/Kibbee/Jenkins, _French: A Linguistic Introduction_,
> I'll try to summarize for Northern Metropolitan (= Parisian) French.
>
> The basic rule is that CVC syllables have /ɛ, œ, ɔ/ and CV syllables
> have /e, ø, o/.
>

Is "j'aime" one syllable "jèm", or two "jè-m@" (with irregular è)?

"Nous aimons" is "nou zè-mon", anyway.

Others: fê/ter, fê/tons; frai/ser; ai/sé...

So on the contrary, -Cè- is not rare, mid-wordly.

--
guido wugi

>> Sat, 5 Jun 2021 05:28:09 -0700 (PDT): Arnaud Fournet
>>> In theory, inherited phonology would mean aimai is émé, but aimais is émè,

>Le dimanche 6 juin 2021 à 07:42:54 UTC+2, Ruud Harmsen a écrit :
>> Not èmé and èmè? We were taught (in 1966) to pronounce the more common
>> words aimer, aimez, aimé and aimée all as èmé.

Sun, 6 Jun 2021 04:22:44 -0700 (PDT): Arnaud Fournet
<fournet.arnaud@wanadoo.fr> scribeva:
>This sounds quite incorrect, both synchronically and diachronically.

Dan hebben wij het verkeerd geleerd.
Then they taught us wrong.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

Sun, 6 Jun 2021 04:22:44 -0700 (PDT): Arnaud Fournet
<fournet.arnaud@wanadoo.fr> scribeva:
>> >In theory, inherited phonology would mean aimai is émé, but aimais is émè,
>> Not èmé and èmè? We were taught (in 1966) to pronounce the more common
>> words aimer, aimez, aimé and aimée all as èmé.
>
>This sounds quite incorrect, both synchronically and diachronically.

So this overfamous "Je t'aime" sounds as 'je téme', not "je tème".
Very strange.

--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

Op 6/06/2021 om 17:14 schreef Ruud Harmsen:
> Sun, 6 Jun 2021 04:22:44 -0700 (PDT): Arnaud Fournet
> <fournet.arnaud@wanadoo.fr> scribeva:
>>>> In theory, inherited phonology would mean aimai is émé, but aimais is émè,
>>> Not èmé and èmè? We were taught (in 1966) to pronounce the more common
>>> words aimer, aimez, aimé and aimée all as èmé.
>>
>> This sounds quite incorrect, both synchronically and diachronically.
>
> So this overfamous "Je t'aime" sounds as 'je téme', not "je tème".

It doesn't; it does.

> Very strange.

What's a syllable in French? Plus the 'rule' doesn't hold. (see my other
'inhaken').

--
guido wugi

Sun, 6 Jun 2021 05:58:42 -0700 (PDT): Dingbat
<ranjit_mathews@yahoo.com> scribeva:
>I remember a punny joke about a WW pilot's story about being chased by
> Fokkers being heard as Fuckers. There is a surname Focker with too
>open a vowel to be thus heard.

Fokker is a Dutch surname, with no connotations at all. The verb
'fokken' means 'to breed', of animals like horses and dogs.

Most Dutch people speaking English are totally confused about those
vowels, they have no idea that love and luck have the same vowel, they
think love is like lock.

(I was confused about 'front' myself too, until about 10 years ago.)

--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

>> >> >DO NOT DELETE ATTRIBUTIONS

I will now.

>> >> >> >> Not surprising. The phonetic difference between [e] and [I] is largely
>> >> >> >> undefined.
>> >> >> > What an odd thing to say. If those two phones belong to different
>> >> >> I agree with Ruud.
>> >> >Maybe he is misusing "undefined." What do you think he meant by it?
>> >> A clear discription of what the difference is, in acoustic,
>> >> articulary, auditory terms. Height, positition on front-back scale,
>> >> formants.
>> >Perhaps in your autodidacticism you've never encountered the prolific
>> >authors Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson.
>>
>> Ladefoged is a VERY well known name to me, Maddieson is not.
>>
>> >They provide charts
>> >galore of the formant-based vowel triangles of English and many other
>> >languages averaged from dozens (or more; fewer for endangered languages,
>> >of course) of speakers.
>>
>> I am talking about IPA in general, not about specific languages.
>
>Utterly meaningless. The Internat Phon Assoc has tried to provide enough
>symbols that they can be used to write all _phonemic_ distinctions in any
>language.

Right, so the symbols as such are undefined. They have no meaning
whatsoever in phonetic terms. That makes them unusable.

>(For a few rare contrasts, they resort to diacritics, such as for the
>few languages that contrast dental and alveolar points of articulation.)
>
>Daniel Jones's "Cardinal Vowels" system is orthogonal to IPA.

I don't understand the word "orthogonal" in this figurative sense.
Will look up later when less tired.

--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

>> >Oy. Sounds like the British r-less problem --
>>
>> Historically related, yes. Many forms of English, Dutch, German,
>> Danish have vocalisations of syllable-final r, although the details
>> vary. They affect the vowels.
>>
>> >they have to posit a whole
>> >extra series of surface phonemes to account for the vowels before
>> >former /r/.
>>
>> We don't. Not yet. Allophones.
>
>It would be simpler to just not drop the r's/

Many Americans drop them too. Many more, who ARE rhotic, have very
light final r's, not too different from mine, in Dutch.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

On 2021-06-05, Dingbat <ranjit_mathews@yahoo.com> wrote:

> The only thing I remember from an Oz English chart is that /aI/ is realized as [EI].

You are severely confused. PRICE is realized [Ae] in Australian
English. The far low back starting point is very characteristic.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

Le dimanche 6 juin 2021 à 17:14:32 UTC+2, Ruud Harmsen a écrit :
> Sun, 6 Jun 2021 04:22:44 -0700 (PDT): Arnaud Fournet
> <fournet...@wanadoo.fr> scribeva:
> >> >In theory, inherited phonology would mean aimai is émé, but aimais is émè,
> >> Not èmé and èmè? We were taught (in 1966) to pronounce the more common
> >> words aimer, aimez, aimé and aimée all as èmé.
> >
> >This sounds quite incorrect, both synchronically and diachronically.
> So this overfamous "Je t'aime" sounds as 'je téme', not "je tème".
> Very strange.

no, je t'aime is je-t-èm (closed syllable, hence è).

Le dimanche 6 juin 2021 à 16:51:18 UTC+2, wugi a écrit :
> Op 5/06/2021 om 17:22 schreef Christian Weisgerber:
> > On 2021-06-04, António Marques <anton...@sapo.pt> wrote:
> >
> >> In the french I was taught, <ai> was just the same as <è>. I've since been
> >> made aware that is often the same as <é>, but not the rules for that. This
> >> looks like as good as time as any other to inquire about those.
> >> What are the rules? Quelles sont-elles, les règles?
> >
> > That is part of the bigger question how the mid-close /e, ø, o/ and
> > mid-open vowels /ɛ, œ, ɔ/ are distributed. The answer to that is
> > made complicated by regional differences--don't trust the Belgian!--and
> This before telling about the same as I did, but learnedlier.
> > the fact that the descriptive rules from 1900 have fossilized into
> > prescriptive ones.
> >
> > Based on Fagyal/Kibbee/Jenkins, _French: A Linguistic Introduction_,
> > I'll try to summarize for Northern Metropolitan (= Parisian) French.
> >
> > The basic rule is that CVC syllables have /ɛ, œ, ɔ/ and CV syllables
> > have /e, ø, o/.
> >
> Is "j'aime" one syllable "jèm", or two "jè-m@" (with irregular è)?

No, -è- is perfectly regular and expectable.

>
> "Nous aimons" is "nou zè-mon", anyway.

no, nous aimons is nou-zé-mon (é in open non-final syllable).

On 2021-06-06, Ruud Harmsen <rh@rudhar.com> wrote:

>>In theory, inherited phonology would mean aimai is émé, but aimais is émè,
>
> Not èmé and èmè? We were taught (in 1966) to pronounce the more common
> words aimer, aimez, aimé and aimée all as èmé.

For a look at how things were back in the 19th century, I recommend
the online reproduction of Littré:
https://www.littre.org/

He has a three-way distinction /e/-/ɛ/-/ɛː/ (é-è-ê), among other
things. While /ɛː/ had developed from compensatory lengthening
after loss of -s- (fête, maître), it had also spread into words
where there is no evident etymological source (reine, presse).

My 2006 Robert Micro lists "aimable" [ɛmabl], but "aimer" [eme].
Hmm, looking at other ai- entries, this may actually reflect vowel
harmony!

Also, I just realized that [eme] turns "aimer" into a "céder"-style
verb with predictable vowel alternation:
j' aime [ɛm]
tu aimes [ɛm]
il aime [ɛm]
nous aimons [emɔ̃]
vous aimez [eme]
ils aiment [ɛm]

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On 2021-06-06, wugi <wugi@scrlt.com> wrote:

> It is département. Is C@ a syllable in French?

Yes. When the /ə/ surfaces, it's a regular vowel.

> Dé-part-ment or Dé-par-t@-ment?

Either.

How to analyze the disappearing /ə/ is a vexing question. I guess
you could treat it as a phoneme that can have a zero surface
realization, but this will also effect syllabification and thus
trigger further surface effects like voicing assimilation.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On Sunday, June 6, 2021 at 6:30:06 PM UTC+2, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> On 2021-06-06, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
>
> >>In theory, inherited phonology would mean aimai is émé, but aimais is émè,
> >
> > Not èmé and èmè? We were taught (in 1966) to pronounce the more common
> > words aimer, aimez, aimé and aimée all as èmé.
> For a look at how things were back in the 19th century, I recommend
> the online reproduction of Littré:
> https://www.littre.org/

Interesting. Littré still lists 'aimer' as “è-mé”. So in 1966, they tought as the French that was then about a 100 years old. Well, what else.

> He has a three-way distinction /e/-/ɛ/-/ɛː/ (é-è-ê), among other
> things. While /ɛː/ had developed from compensatory lengthening
> after loss of -s- (fête, maître), it had also spread into words
> where there is no evident etymological source (reine, presse).
>
> My 2006 Robert Micro lists "aimable" [ɛmabl], but "aimer" [eme].
> Hmm, looking at other ai- entries, this may actually reflect vowel
> harmony!

> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>Daniel Jones's "Cardinal Vowels" system is orthogonal to IPA.

Sun, 06 Jun 2021 17:26:07 +0200: Ruud Harmsen <rh@rudhar.com>
scribeva:
>I don't understand the word "orthogonal" in this figurative sense.
>Will look up later when less tired.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/orthogonal
"Of two or more problems or subjects, independent of or irrelevant to
each other."

Nevertheless, I will keep using both, and in relation to each other,
because that makes sense and is convenient.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

Sun, 06 Jun 2021 17:27:19 +0200: Ruud Harmsen <rh@rudhar.com>
scribeva:

>>> >Oy. Sounds like the British r-less problem --
>>>
>>> Historically related, yes. Many forms of English, Dutch, German,
>>> Danish have vocalisations of syllable-final r, although the details
>>> vary. They affect the vowels.
>>>
>>> >they have to posit a whole
>>> >extra series of surface phonemes to account for the vowels before
>>> >former /r/.
>>>
>>> We don't. Not yet. Allophones.
>>
>>It would be simpler to just not drop the r's/
>
>Many Americans drop them too. Many more, who ARE rhotic, have very
>light final r's, not too different from mine, in Dutch.

Like in arm, park, bier, rivier, beter, in
https://rudhar.com/lingtics/intrdutc/dutch.htm .
Identical in meaning, almost the same in sounds.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

Sun, 6 Jun 2021 15:05:12 -0000 (UTC): Christian Weisgerber
<naddy@mips.inka.de> scribeva:

>On 2021-06-05, Dingbat <ranjit_mathews@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> The only thing I remember from an Oz English chart is that /aI/ is realized as [EI].
>
>You are severely confused. PRICE is realized [Ae] in Australian
>English. The far low back starting point is very characteristic.

Yes. And in <praise> they use what other people have in <prize>. And
in "peas" they use some sort of central starting diphthong. That
leaves room for <bit> to have the vowel that <beat> has in non-AU (and
non-NZ) English, but shorter.

Vowels and diphthongs playing cat and mouse. Where will it end?
Meanwhile, some American pronounce <sex> as if it were sax or sacks. A
movement in the other direction.

Will English spoken in the US, UK, ZA, AU and NZ be as different in
the year 2470, as Italian, Spanish and Portuguese are now?
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

On Sunday, June 6, 2021 at 11:27:22 AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:

IF YOU QUOTE SOMEONE, DO NOT REMOVE THE IDENTIFICATION
OF WHOM YOU QUOTE.
> >It would be simpler to just not drop the r's/
>
> Many Americans drop them too. Many more, who ARE rhotic, have very
> light final r's, not too different from mine, in Dutch.

But non-rhotic Americans (Deep South, New York, Boston) do not pretend
that the vowels in the syllables that have lost their r are different from the
vowels that didn't have an r in the first place.

Op 6/06/2021 om 18:27 schreef Arnaud Fournet:
> Le dimanche 6 juin 2021 à 16:51:18 UTC+2, wugi a écrit :
>> Op 5/06/2021 om 17:22 schreef Christian Weisgerber:
>>> On 2021-06-04, António Marques <anton...@sapo.pt> wrote:
>>>
>>>> In the french I was taught, <ai> was just the same as <è>. I've since been
>>>> made aware that is often the same as <é>, but not the rules for that. This
>>>> looks like as good as time as any other to inquire about those.
>>>> What are the rules? Quelles sont-elles, les règles?
>>> That is part of the bigger question how the mid-close /e, ø, o/ and
>>> mid-open vowels /ɛ, œ, ɔ/ are distributed. The answer to that is
>>> made complicated by regional differences--don't trust the Belgian!--and
>> This before telling about the same as I did, but learnedlier.
>>> the fact that the descriptive rules from 1900 have fossilized into
>>> prescriptive ones.
>>>
>>> Based on Fagyal/Kibbee/Jenkins, _French: A Linguistic Introduction_,
>>> I'll try to summarize for Northern Metropolitan (= Parisian) French.
>>>
>>> The basic rule is that CVC syllables have /ɛ, œ, ɔ/ and CV syllables
>>> have /e, ø, o/.
>>>
>> Is "j'aime" one syllable "jèm", or two "jè-m@" (with irregular è)?
> No, -è- is perfectly regular and expectable.

Well, to me also.

>> "Nous aimons" is "nou zè-mon", anyway.
> no, nous aimons is nou-zé-mon (é in open non-final syllable).

If one endeavours completeness one could add... except in Belgium and
sure some more regions...

--

guido wugi

On Sunday, June 6, 2021 at 11:26:10 AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> >> >> >DO NOT DELETE ATTRIBUTIONS
>
> I will now.
>
> >> >> >> >> Not surprising. The phonetic difference between [e] and [I] is largely
> >> >> >> >> undefined.
> >> >> >> > What an odd thing to say. If those two phones belong to different
> >> >> >> I agree with Ruud.
> >> >> >Maybe he is misusing "undefined." What do you think he meant by it?
> >> >> A clear discription of what the difference is, in acoustic,
> >> >> articulary, auditory terms. Height, positition on front-back scale,
> >> >> formants.
> >> >Perhaps in your autodidacticism you've never encountered the prolific
> >> >authors Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson.
> >>
> >> Ladefoged is a VERY well known name to me, Maddieson is not.
> >>
> >> >They provide charts
> >> >galore of the formant-based vowel triangles of English and many other
> >> >languages averaged from dozens (or more; fewer for endangered languages,
> >> >of course) of speakers.
> >>
> >> I am talking about IPA in general, not about specific languages.
> >
> >Utterly meaningless. The Internat Phon Assoc has tried to provide enough
> >symbols that they can be used to write all _phonemic_ distinctions in any
> >language.
>
> Right, so the symbols as such are undefined. They have no meaning
> whatsoever in phonetic terms. That makes them unusable.
>
> >(For a few rare contrasts, they resort to diacritics, such as for the
> >few languages that contrast dental and alveolar points of articulation.)
> >
> >Daniel Jones's "Cardinal Vowels" system is orthogonal to IPA.
>
> I don't understand the word "orthogonal" in this figurative sense.
> Will look up later when less tired.

nerd (autist) humor - In statistics it means independent.

> --
> Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

Sun, 6 Jun 2021 11:53:23 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@verizon.net> scribeva:

>On Sunday, June 6, 2021 at 11:27:22 AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>
>IF YOU QUOTE SOMEONE, DO NOT REMOVE THE IDENTIFICATION
>OF WHOM YOU QUOTE.

Please stop screaming, or I'll remove you.

--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

On 2021-06-06, Ruud Harmsen <rh@rudhar.com> wrote:

> Isn't 'parlai' a largely theoretical and litterary form anyway?

It's the standard past tense for narrative prose. It belongs
exclusively to the written register, though, so you basically hear
it only when somebody reads a written text aloud.

> If people don't use a form in day-to-day speech, they no longer learn it
> as a child, so how should they know how it's pronounced?

I would guess they encounter it first when being read to by their
parents. Fairy tales and such. I don't know whether the passé
simple is used in modern children's books.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On Saturday, June 5, 2021 at 11:10:13 PM UTC-7, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> Sat, 5 Jun 2021 16:14:01 -0700 (PDT): Dingbat
> <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> scribeva:
> >On Saturday, June 5, 2021 at 7:30:06 AM UTC-7, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> >> On 2021-06-05, Dingbat <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > I don't remember an English chart but English doesn't have an [e].
> >> At that level of detail you need to specify which variant of English.
> >> Southern hemisphere accents have raised the DRESS vowel to [e].
> >
> >DRESS has [e] in Malayalis' English also but I wasn't counting such accents.
> >The only thing I remember from an Oz English chart is that /aI/ is realized as [EI].
> More like [OI]?
> --
Come to think of it, it mighta been their /eI/ that the chart described as [EI].
If so, I don't remember how their /aI/ was described.

but I do remember needing contextual clues to tell whether a Strine speaker
is saying <paper> or <piper>.

On 7/06/2021 12:58 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sunday, June 6, 2021 at 1:10:58 AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>> Sat, 5 Jun 2021 07:01:11 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
>> <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:
>>> On Saturday, June 5, 2021 at 9:40:04 AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>>>> Fri, 4 Jun 2021 12:35:51 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
>>>> <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:
>>>>> On Friday, June 4, 2021 at 3:16:02 PM UTC-4, wugi wrote:
>>>>>> Op 4/06/2021 om 19:58 schreef Peter T. Daniels:
>
>>>>> DO NOT DELETE ATTRIBUTIONS
>
>>>>>>>> Not surprising. The phonetic difference between [e] and [I] is largely
>>>>>>>> undefined.
>>>>>>> What an odd thing to say. If those two phones belong to different
>>>>>> I agree with Ruud.
>>>>> Maybe he is misusing "undefined." What do you think he meant by it?
>>>> A clear discription of what the difference is, in acoustic,
>>>> articulary, auditory terms. Height, positition on front-back scale,
>>>> formants.
>>> Perhaps in your autodidacticism you've never encountered the prolific
>>> authors Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson.
>>
>> Ladefoged is a VERY well known name to me, Maddieson is not.
>>
>>> They provide charts
>>> galore of the formant-based vowel triangles of English and many other
>>> languages averaged from dozens (or more; fewer for endangered languages,
>>> of course) of speakers.
>>
>> I am talking about IPA in general, not about specific languages.
>
> Utterly meaningless. The Internat Phon Assoc has tried to provide enough
> symbols that they can be used to write all _phonemic_ distinctions in any
> language. (For a few rare contrasts, they resort to diacritics, such as for the
> few languages that contrast dental and alveolar points of articulation.)
>
> Daniel Jones's "Cardinal Vowels" system is orthogonal to IPA. It can only
> \be learned by personal instruction direct from Jones, or from those who
> had it from him (Ladefoged was one of his very last students) -- but he
> made audio recordings of the Cardinal Vowels several times during his
> career, and the several recordings _do not agree_ among themselves.
>
> Maddieson is Ladefoged's most prominent student -- now retired --
> and is the co-author of the most important phonetics reference guide
> there is (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996). (Australian-origin; pronounced
> like Madison.)

No, not Australian. (Otherwise OK.)
You've said this ("Australian") before, and your only evidence seemed to
be that he sounded Australian to you when you met him.
Still can't find any mention of Australia here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Maddieson

I wish you could learn to pick your own nits (avoid repeating errors
that have been corrected).