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Quickie: <uy>

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2017 6:32 am
by alice
Aside from Dutch, where it's something of an archaism, are there any languages which use this?

Re: Quickie: <uy>

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2017 7:09 am
by Salmoneus
The letters u and y in succession? Well yeah, most languages that use both <u> and <y>, I assume. Or specifically as a digraph to indicate a diphthong or vowel (i.e. both letters belong to the same syllable)? Well yeah, obviously, <y> is a really common way to indicate /j/, which is a common second element of diphthongs.

To give some concrete examples:
English: "guy"
Spanish: "muy"
Turkish: "uygulama"
Vietnamese: "ruy-băng"
Cebuano: "luyluy"
Quechua: "asuy"
etc.

Re: Quickie: <uy>

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2017 2:19 pm
by alice
Obvious, really, if you put it that way. More restrictively: are there phonemic diphthongs written <uy>, not just sequences of /u/ + /j/?

Re: Quickie: <uy>

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2017 3:12 pm
by Soap
Vietnamese seems to use it to distinguish/ wi/ from /uj/..
That is, {uy } spells /wi/, because Y is a vowel. {W}Is not used.

Re: Quickie: <uy>

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2017 3:32 pm
by Vijay
I thought <uy> in Vietnamese was supposed to be [y]. :o

Re: Quickie: <uy>

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2017 5:30 pm
by Salmoneus
alice wrote:Obvious, really, if you put it that way. More restrictively: are there phonemic diphthongs written <uy>, not just sequences of /u/ + /j/?
Yes, English. <guy> is /g{j/, not /gu.j/.

Re: Quickie: <uy>

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2017 5:43 pm
by Sumelic
Salmoneus wrote:
alice wrote:Obvious, really, if you put it that way. More restrictively: are there phonemic diphthongs written <uy>, not just sequences of /u/ + /j/?
Yes, English. <guy> is /g{j/, not /gu.j/.
English <guy> is arguably better analyzed as <gu> /g/ (as in guild, guard, guest, guess) + <y> /aɪ/ (as in try, fly, cry), though. The only other native or naturalized English word with the putative <uy> = /aɪ/ correspondence seems to be "buy", and the resources I have looked at tend to favor classifying this as <bu> /b/ + <y> /aɪ/, which is admittedly a bit unintuitive but makes for a simpler overall analysis of English spelling patterns, as it takes care of "build" and (one pronunciation of) "buoy" alongside "buy" (see A Survey of English Spelling, by Edward Carney, and Dictionary of the British English Spelling System, by Greg Brooks).

Re: Quickie: <uy>

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2017 11:58 pm
by Soap
{Yippie cuyay} &{ van Nuys} are 2 othe r examples,though both probably generalized from other English words.
Edit: well, I've *seen* it spelled{ cuyay},so it must have seemed tp be the most logical spelling for someone.
Edit2: the Cuyahoga river probably helped with that.

Re: Quickie: <uy>

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2017 9:34 am
by Nortaneous
Sumelic wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:
alice wrote:Obvious, really, if you put it that way. More restrictively: are there phonemic diphthongs written <uy>, not just sequences of /u/ + /j/?
Yes, English. <guy> is /g{j/, not /gu.j/.
English <guy> is arguably better analyzed as <gu> /g/ (as in guild, guard, guest, guess) + <y> /aɪ/ (as in try, fly, cry), though. The only other native or naturalized English word with the putative <uy> = /aɪ/ correspondence seems to be "buy", and the resources I have looked at tend to favor classifying this as <bu> /b/ + <y> /aɪ/, which is admittedly a bit unintuitive but makes for a simpler overall analysis of English spelling patterns, as it takes care of "build" and (one pronunciation of) "buoy" alongside "buy" (see A Survey of English Spelling, by Edward Carney, and Dictionary of the British English Spelling System, by Greg Brooks).
and Dutch loans, e.g. Stuyvesant /staivəsənt/; however, Schuylkill /skuwkəl/