Interesting Vowel System Representation

[Ċeaddawīc]

I've recently been inspired by this vowel thing, and I thought it might be fun to try and represent my idiolect in a semi-symmetric way, i.e., I've taken what I believe is a pretty accurate representation of my idiolect and put it in a prettier shape. It's actually quite revealing, and here it is:

Code: Select all

i       u\      (w)
                 
  e  I_X    7"  7

   E          O
         6
    &       A"

For those of you who (like me) don't have the slightest idea how to read X-SAMPA, here are the IPA equivalents., in left-to-right and top-to-bottom order:

i ʉ w e ɪ̽ ɤ̈ ɤ ɛ ɔ ɐ æ ɑ̈]

And for those of you who can't see IPA as a result of the new forums (does anyone know how to fix that?), here's an image:



Now, when I've heard/read/seen people talking about "tense" and "lax" vowels in English, I've always been thinking "What are they smoking?" Something that particularly annoyed me when someone (I believe Zompist himself) says that I should just be able to tell what he's talking about, and I was always lost. One thing I notice when I order my inventory like this, is that there are some "interior" vowels, namely , [7], and [6], and I think that's what "tense" vowels are. Or "lax". I really don't know.

One might note the marginal existence of [e], [u/], [7], and [O], which are only in the diphthongs [ej]; [u\w]; [7w]; and [Or\] and [Oj], respectively.

What are your guys's vowels?

[makvas]

Been done a bunch of times before, like this thread: http://zbb.spinnwebe.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=36187

You seem to be putting phonemes in brackets, you shouldn't. If /e/ is [ej], don't say [e] is [ej] (it most certainly is not).

My own analysis of vowels has 6 monophthongs and replaces all other phonemes generally considered singular vowels with diphthongs; /A E I @ U Aj Ej Ij @w Uw/, which is nice and symmetric. The "interior" vowels you are talking about would be the lax ones.

[Alces]

I find it best to represent my vowels on several different charts:

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Short monophthongs  Long monophthongs   With /i/ glide  With /u/ glide

i----ʉ---.          i----ʉ---.          ---------.      ---------.
\  ɪ   ʊ |          \        |          \  ɪ     |      \    ɨ   |
 \       |           \       |           \       |       \       |
  \   ə  |            \      ɔ            e      ɔ        \    ɵ |
   ɛ     |             \  ɜ  |             \     |         \     |
    \    |              \    |              \    |          \    |
     a---ɒ               ----ɑ               a---'           a---'

Only /ʉ/ when a monophthong and final /u/ glides of diphthongs are rounded very much. Unlike most other English accents, my /ɔː/ is not very rounded though it is raised. So /ɒ ʊ/ are only really distinguished from /ɑː ɔː/ by length.

[i iː ɪi] and [ʉ ʉː ɨu] are allophones of the same phonemes, /iː/ and /uː/. They are long before voiced consonants and diphthongs in word-final position (although they are slight diphthongs in other environments, they are very noticeably diphthongs word-finally). The diphthongs [ai au] also lengthen in both voiced and word-final position.

I know that diphthongs are usually written with final /ɪ ʊ/, but what they actually have in my speech are offglides not as high as /iː uː/ but not as low or centralised as /ɪ ʊ/. So I find it simpler to write /i u/, although this probably doesn't reflect any real difference from other people's English. The long forms of /ai au/, however, do have noticeably lax offglides so I use [aːɪ aːʊ].

All of these diphthong offglides are lengthened slightly before voiced consonants, so 'bait' [beit] but 'bade' [beiˑd].