English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

But all those purported triphthongs are not considered such except by British people. It does not make sense with anything I was taught when I took phonetics and phonology in America or Spain.

Cerberus

The context "in American English" was not apparent to me.

tchrist

10:05 PM

It doesn’t matter.

It is not American English.

It is that American phoneticists consider the British idea that those are triphthongs to be in error.

Cerberus

I could see how wow might be triphthongal, but OED says diphthong.

tchrist

A triphthong has a principal vowel with both an onset glide and an offset glide.

user19161

@tchrist Do you mean principal?

tchrist

Yes.

Cerberus

So how would you transcribe yay if you prefer to consider it a triphthong?

What are the three vocalic sounds?

tchrist

10:07 PM

A diphthong has a main vowel, which forms the syllabic center, and a glide either fore or aft but not both.

Wow has the same sound on both sides of the a.

Cerberus

How is a glide defined?

tchrist

It is not just the same letter. It is the same sound.

Here, a glide is one of either /j/ or /w/.

That is, a semi-consonant or semi-vowel.

Cerberus

I'm not sure that's how I learned the definition of a diphthong.

It is true that all diphthongs are as you say in Greek and Latin.

tchrist

And Spanish and Italian.

A diphthong can only be a single syllable.

Same for a triphthong.

So help me God I for the first time in fucking life want autocompletion in typing English. I hate those words.

Cerberus

Ai, au, ei, eu, êi, êu, oi, ou, ôi, ôu (rare). But no diphthongs or triphthongs can be made starting with a glide, nor with /i/ or /y/ / /u/.

tchrist

10:11 PM

Ah.

Well, that is the thing.

Cerberus

@tchrist I hear you!

user19161

I use autocompletion only for names like @MετάEd because I can't ping him otherwise.

user19161

@Cerberus Do you hear me too?

Cerberus

@JasonBourne Were you saying "diphthong" and "triphthong"?

tchrist

I talked to a Portuguese phonetician once, and she explained that some people only considered falling dippies to be such, that the rising ones “didn’t count” in their notebooks.

user19161

10:12 PM

I think we should all do away with the funny characters in usernames. It makes the site look so stupid! Anyone agrees?

Cerberus

Yes.

Always have.

tchrist

*agree

Cerberus

A capital and no weird characters.

Perhaps unless they used in some sublime way that trumps all rules.

When I type "dipthong", it is auto-corrected.

tchrist

@Cerberus This Wikepedia paragraph and table are very readable and coherent.

user19161

It all started with ELU first birthday. Then it stuck.

Cerberus

10:14 PM

I think it started in protest against TPTB.

A sign of solidarity.

tchrist

Really?

Cerberus

I think so.

tchrist

I never understood it, I confess, but that is an interesting datum.

user19161

No, I think it was for fun mostly.

Cerberus

It coincides with the aftermath of the crisis.

tchrist

10:15 PM

Notice that Spanish has six falling and eight rising dippies. The reason they define it this way has to do with syllable counting for poetry.

user19161

@tchrist Dippies? I saw that as nipples.

Cerberus

The question is, why do we even treat diphthongs as a special category? Why not treat them as simple additions of /e/ and /w/?

tchrist

If you have something in hiatus when it would normally be a dippy, you have to write it specially. So Mario has two syllables with /jo/ in the second one, whereas María has three syllables and no dippy.

Cerberus

/marija/?

tchrist

I bet I could write a program to assign a typeability metric to any English word based on the QWERTY keyboard.

Just /ma'ri.a/, actually.

Cerberus

10:18 PM

Depends on your notation, probably, but I clearly hear a glide after /i/.

tchrist

It is tough but possible to find minimal pairs where the /j/ matters.

user19161

Did someone mention Maria? HAHAHAHAHA

tchrist

I know what you mean. I am not completely convinced it is not there.

Cerberus

Pronounce mariiiiiiiiia as when you're singing in an opera.

You clearly hear ma-ri-ja.

I think children sometimes write Marija or Marieja.

user19161

@cerb should know why I laugh at Maria.

Cerberus

10:19 PM

@JasonBourne does

tchrist

They oughtn’t. :(

Cerberus

Why not?

The j is there.

tchrist

I don’t think so. But I am not sure.

Cerberus

If you say "Marie, ja" it sounds almost the same as "Maria".

tchrist

If it is there, it is in a million other places.

dijalogue.

Cerberus

10:21 PM

►

@tchrist Yes, and millions of /w/ too.

Ave Maharihihi-ja.

tchrist

Not to my ear.

Latin has pure vowels.

Cerberus

You are not conditioned to hear it.

tchrist

They do not autodip.

As English’s do.

Cerberus

And it is insignificant, so most languages rarely write these j's and w's.

tchrist

Pijano.

Cerberus

10:22 PM

A syllable has to start with something. It can't start with a vocalic sound.

tchrist

Sure it can.

Consider neon.

Or peon.

Cerberus

/pijæno/ in English, no? The difference between pjano and piano is hard to tell in many languages.

Nejon.

user19161

@matt I am actually starting to like CentOS now...

tchrist

/'pjano/ has two syllables, but /pi'ano/ has three.

Cerberus

The OED just doesn't note /j/ between vowels because it is not phonemic in any way.

user19161

10:25 PM

By the way, it is pronounced as cent O S, not cen toss.

Matt Эллен

@JasonBourne jolly good. I've not tried it

Cerberus

@tchrist Yes, and yet it is often hard to hear the difference. Cf /'kcomprəbl/ v. /"komprə'bəl/.

Dictionary IPA does not claim to be complete.

I think it only renders phonemes?

In Dutch, otherwise you would need at least four notations for every word containing an r!

tchrist

Ok, I thought of an easy one.

You know how most Spanish speakers pronounce <ll> as /j/ not /ʎ/ now, right?

Well, there is a minimal pair between two common words calle /'kaje/ ‘street’ and cae /'ka.e/ ‘falls’.

And no, that never becomes monosyllabic /kai/ or /kaj/.

So that shows that it is possible to transition between one vowel in one syllable to another hiatial vowel in the next syllable without there being a glide between them.

The problem is that in English, we do not have pure vowels, so our <o> becomes /ou/ which you might consider /ow/, and our <e> becomes /ei/, which you might consider /ej/.

Well, except in meh.

Cerberus

@tchrist I don't believe it. There are phonological rules for contraction beyond the mere local sound.

tchrist

But that is not “real” English.

Can’t you say cae without a /j/?

I certainly can.

Cerberus

10:35 PM

With a and e, usually another sound ir produced, I believe, more like h.

Somewhere in between j and h, I'd say.

tchrist

Then you are saying it wrong. :)

Or you are speaking English. :)

Cerberus

And you can pronounce j weakly or strongly. So all sorts of variations and differentiations are possible.

tchrist

Or French.

Hence cayenne.

Cerberus

@tchrist They are pronouncing strong j instead of what I would call weak j or j-h.

tchrist

But I swear to you that in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, those things do not happen. There are minimal pairs.

Cerberus

10:37 PM

We are talking past each other, I think.

If a j is realised, it is certainly not realised as strongly after a as after i.

tchrist

So hey there, me boyo! Certainly you have no trippy there.

Cerberus

The place or articulation for the intermediary sound between two vowels depends mostly on that of the first vowel, I believe.

tchrist

I cannot imagine this j-after-i thing.

That is an impure system.

Cerberus

So i=>j, but u=>w.

With other vowels, I think it's something in between u/j/h. Not sure what to call it.

That's why i/j and u/w are called semi-vowels.

In certain contexts/disciplines.

They alternate between vowel, consonant, and both. Or something in between.

tchrist

Boy is /boɪ/, and boyo is /'boɪ.oʊ/.

If you really want to write the semi-vowels as semi-consonants, nothing changes except your notion of a dippy.

/boj/ and /'bojow/.

Or something weird like that.

Cerberus

10:42 PM

In boy, you might write /boɪj/...but we have no approximate notation for whatever the transition between o and ɪ sounds like.

tchrist

But to me, that is actually wrong, because I can say a bo-yo word that has /'bojoʊ/ instead of /'boɪ.oʊ/. Can’t you?

And those sound different to me, too.

Matt Эллен

like yo-yo vs yoy-oh

Cerberus

I can say /boɪjo/ v. /bojo/.

tchrist

@MattЭллен Exactly.

I think you are making up the /j/. I thought only Germans did that.

Cerberus

I can't leave out the /j/ sound.

tchrist

10:44 PM

v.s.

Cerberus

@MattЭллен /jojo/ v. /joɪjo/.

tchrist

So you want to spell it /boj/ then, fine. Many people will be confused by your notation, but fine.

Cerberus

As I said, dictionary notation is phonemic.

There are so many ways to write IPA.

The intervocalic j and w I mentioned are not phonemic, and hence usually not written.

tchrist

My other idea is that there is no /j/ between my and other.

Nobody writes it that way.

Not even in phonetic transcriptions.

But you are welcome to try to cite a source that does that.

For English.

Because I am making it easy on you.

“Day in, day out.” No /j/ there.

Matt Эллен

@Kit I found you a friend

tchrist

10:55 PM

@MattЭллен My, what big ears you have, Grandmother!

Matt Эллен

all the better to eat you with. secretly all the orifices are mouths.

Cerberus

Yes, I clearly hear a j-like sound in day in and my other.

Mind you, I never said this sound was always as strong as phonemic /j/.

tchrist

@Cerberus I know this is not English, but if you pronounce Spanish veo (< ver < L. videre) is though it were veio (/vejo/) people are really going to look at you weird. It is possible to go from /e/ to /o/ without passing through /j/. There is no fundamental impediment that exists in all languages. You are just too used to Germanic diphthongization / offglides / dippiness. In a language with a tighter articulation like Italian or Spanish, it is anything but inevitable.

Germanic languages have loose articulation. Romance, tight; even French is medium. The looseness must be what you are perceiving.

Cerberus

Remember also that I said the intervocalic sound depends on the first vowel: after /i/, it is clearly /j/-like, but not so after other vowels.

David Wallace

@tchrist That is not the same thing.

Cerberus

11:01 PM

After /e/, it is much less /j/-like.

David Wallace

To get from /a/ to /i/, you need either a /j/ or a glottal stop.

tchrist

Maybe I mean lax articulation. I forget the dominant terminology.

Cerberus

More /h/-like, as I said above.

@DavidWallace Or something /h/-ish.

@tchrist Of course veo doesn't sound exactly like /vejo/.

You need to be very precise here. No sloppiness allowed!

I would clearly distinguish veo from /vejo/.

But how about veo v. veho?

I think those are somewhat close.

David Wallace

Veo is irrelevant.

Cerberus

Irrelevant with respect to what?

tchrist

11:06 PM

Very precise? Very well, if you insist. Spanish has no /v/. You need to write that as /ˈβ̞e̞o̞/ except at the beginning of an utterance or after /n/ or /l/, in which case it becomes /ˈbe̞o̞/. In any event, there is no hint of /j/ or you are doing it wrong.

We can move on to Deo if you would prefer.

Latinate Deo is never day-o.

It just does not work that way.

David Wallace

Deo and veo are equally relevant.

tchrist

It marks you as a dumb gringo. Every choral instructor will box your ears for mispronouncing Deo.

Which proves that there need be no /j/ between /e/ and /o/.

Cerberus

@tchrist You need to be precise in what you claim and what you challenge, because I smell straw here, despite my double correction of what you ascribed to me.

I even made them bold for you, but to no avail.

tchrist

@Cerberus You said that there must be a /j/ or a /w/ between any two vowels in hiatus. I dispute that.

Cerberus

I did not say that.

tchrist

11:09 PM

Or an /h/ or a glottal. Doesn’t matter. There need be no glide or other separator.

That is the point I am arguing against.

If you did not say it, then do you concede it?

Cerberus

Or something in between. And you keep accusing me of pronouncing a full, phonemic j in veo, which is simply ridiculous.

David Wallace

@tchrist If he had said that, I would have contradicted him, instead of you.

@Cerberus Veylight come and me wanna go home.

Cerberus

Haha what. That is from some song, isn't it?

Something African.

I only half remember it.

tchrist

I do not believe there needs to be something between vowels in hiatus. Otherwise, they are not vowels in hiatus.

Cerberus

The latter is my position.

tchrist

11:11 PM

Rather, they are either dippies or separated by some consonant.

Let us consider coöperate.

No fake consonant between those two vowels.

Cerberus

Probably something in between h and w.

It's very hard to become conscious of these sounds.

tchrist

It may be very hard for you to stop doing it. You surely have a loose articulation. These things happen there.

Cerberus

Just as some people fail to comprehend that and starts with a glottal stop. "No, it starts with a vowel! There is no stop. I don't hear it. It simply isn't true."

tchrist

Cowoperating.

Cerberus

@tchrist Excuse me?

There is nothing wrong with my articulation.

tchrist

11:14 PM

And does not normally begin with a glottal stop.

Cerberus

By bones are tightly joined.

tchrist

It does at the beginning of an utterance of course, since the glottis is out of combat.

Cerberus

Of an utterance? I would not go so far.

tchrist

Anybody who puts a glottal stop between things like face and hair is trying way too hard. It is not natural.

Cerberus

Again, straw.

This is going nowhere.

tchrist

11:16 PM

You said and began with a glottal stop.

Prove it.

Cerberus

Ask a question on Linguistics if you are truly interested.

You knew what I meant about and.

I don't feel that I need to state the obvious.

tchrist

No, I knew what you said.

If you meant something else, you should have said something else.

Cerberus

That is not how language works.

What can be reasonably assumed does not require explication.

tchrist

15 mins ago, by Cerberus

You need to be very precise here. No sloppiness allowed!

Et tu.

Cerberus

I was precise enough.

tchrist

11:18 PM

Clearly not. We have an existence proof to the contrary.

I would rather return to trippies: way, yow, why (if you merge w–wh).

Cerberus

You know very well that nobody in his right mind would claim that the glottal stop is heard in hair and face. You know why I mentioned and: to give an example of a phenomenon where many people fail to consciously hear what is apparent to linguists.

tchrist

You seem to know me better than I do. And you are wrong.

Cerberus

So of course this excludes liaison, where there is no glottal stop.

Common knowledge.

tchrist

11:35 PM

@MετάEd You are not going to believe this, but Lawler has invented a new way of superquoting things.

Cerberus

He uses quotation blocks for captions?

tchrist

Yes!

Cerberus

Odd. But...it kind of works?

tchrist

He is not quoting someone else.

I am not complaining. I am noting. Apparently, our Lawler-scale was incorrectly top-bounded.

It is inventive.

What I do not understand is why our double-quote-blocking is so lame on ELU.

I mean, starting with two arrows: >> blah.

Very subtle change. Too subtle.

Cerberus

How does that work?

Never seen/tried that.

tchrist

11:44 PM

Oh, go try it in a sample box.

Cerberus

God, the Bible is boring.

And badly written.

Classical literature was on a level so much higher than this.

Not all of it, of course.

tchrist

Sequihuh?

Cerberus

What?

tchrist

Where did that come from?

And you should try the Canticum Canticorum. It isn’t so bad.

Does this have to do with quoting? Were you double-quoting (so to speak) some Biblical passage?

Sequihuh? = How the heck does what you just said follow from anything?

@Cerberus You should probably fix your posting within the grace period: there is no book of Revelations in the plural.

> Book of the Revelation of Saint John the Divine

> Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ

Something like that. Or just Revelation.

The author of the work provided no title for it. However, a title came into usage from the first word of the book in Koine Greek: apokalypsis, meaning "unveiling" or "revelation".
It is also known as the Book of the Revelation of Saint John the Divine or the Apocalypse of John (both in reference to its author), or the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ (in reference to its opening line), or simply Revelation (often erroneously called Revelations in contrast to the singular in the original Koine), or the Apocalypse.

Cerberus

@tchrist So it comes from sequor?

@tchrist Ah yes.

tchrist

11:59 PM

@Cerberus Yes, it is a way of saying non sequitur and huh all at once, with a stiff eau de WTF wafting about.

Cerberus

But there is no non...

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…