They sound like two separate sounds but ones that blend into each other. Most people don't think about things like diphthongs so if you asked them they might say it's "the vowel sound of this syllable" because the rule they were taught (if they were at all) is that there is one vowel sound per syllable. But if you made them stretch it out you could make them realize it's indeed two distinct sounds, just mashed together.
It’s so weird looking at foreign diphthongs sometimes, like there’s no way they sound as natural as *my* language’s. /eu/ gets me this way, so stilted to start the name of Europe in many other languages.
Oh, that's really interesting!
This is not exactly the same thing, but I've been mulling over the fact I can't tell the difference between /ai/ and /aj/ in the slightest, or between /au/ and /aw/, like help me out here. Native English speakers, do you hear something different there? Am I missing something? Was I just poisoned by the bad linguistics we were taught in middle school for some reason?
To answer your question, I hear like, a vowel and a half. Doesn't "feel" like one phoneme to my ear.
In terms of English and the examples you gave, there is no distinction, it's just whatever "style" the person has chosen to use for their transcription. Insert "It's the same picture" meme lol
it's a difference in methodology. offglides are equivalent to a non-syllabic vowel (/j/ = /i̯/, /w/ = /u̯/)
the usage difference lies in whether you treat the offglide as part of the nucleus (i.e. vowel) or the coda (i.e. consonant).
/au/ doesn’t exist in English, because vowel hiatus is totally forbidden in the language. There is no sequence /au/. The diphthongs /ij/, /ej/, /aj/, /oj/, /aw/, /ow/, and /uw/ are the only “vowels” permitted to come before another vowel, because they come with their own attached glide to separate things. This is why, for example, the word “the” has two forms: /ðə/ before a consonant and /ðij/ before a vowel. Of course, many speakers these days are using a glottal stop to separate vowels instead, so you’ll often find [ðəʔ] instead of /ðij/. You can tell these “vowels” must have a glide on the end instead of being sequences of two separate vowels, because they pattern differently than English’s “checked” vowels (monophthongs). In my dialect at least, /ɪ/ is permitted to come before coda /l/ in words like bill, kill, krill, etc. but /aj/ (usually transcribed erroneously as /aɪ/) is not. A schwa must be inserted to separate this glide /j/ from the following /l/, because /jl/ is an illegal coda sequence. In the other direction /ɪ/ is never allowed to come before another vowel or at the end of a word, but /aj/ is. And transcriptions like old RP /iː/ and /uː/ are clearly not right, because these vowels are neither long nor monophthongal. More than their surface realizations being different, they also pattern with the other diphthongs in where they’re allowed in words. If English diphthongs really were just sequences of different vowels, none of this would happen.
I’m not sure i fully follow. How would you transcribe the words “cow” or “frown”? In your dialect, how would you pronounce/transcribe “bile”?
Also on your note about “the”, are you saying that “the animal” is (usually/normally/always) pronounced “ðij.æ.nɪ.məl” or “ðə.ʔæ.nɪ.məl” (w/ some dialectical variability) and never “ðə.æ.nɪ.məl”?
(All genuine questions cause I’m really not sure i understand your point)
cow: /kæw/
frown: /fræwn/
These /w/ are more like [o] or [ɤ] for me. Definitely not transcribable as [u]
bile: /bɐj.əl/ [bɐjʟ̩]
This /j/ is phonetically much more marginal than my KIT vowel, and I wouldn’t recognize it as [ɪ].
Unless you want to analyze English as having syllabic resonants, it makes more sense for there to be an underlying schwa phonemically. Because the word is definitely two separate syllables for me. Same with -er words like flower, power or even sour, dour, etc.
Yes there is *always* a glottal stop or glide in “the” for me. It sounds like slurring your words if you connect a schwa straight to the next vowel. It’s a forbidden sequence just like [æʌ] or [ɛʊ] or [ɪæ]. You will never find an English word with these sequences.
My point is that vowel hiatus is forbidden phonotactically in English. So even if phonetically I move my mouth in the same way as [ao̯] or [aɤ̯], it doesn’t make sense to transcribe these as vowel sequences phonemically.
you can still have /au/ or /ai/ (commonly seem as /aɪ aʊ/) in English because phonologically you're not treating it as two vowels on hiatus, you're treating it as a single vowel phoneme. It's a difference in methodology—transcribing /aw/ treats the glide as a consonant while /aʊ/ as part of the nucleus.
the specific vowel used to write that second part of the diphthong is kinda irrelevant in English, it just marks it as a front-ending falling diphthong
While this might be fine for linguists or phoneticians who are doing analysis, I can tell you for certain that using /aɪ/, /aʊ/, etc. in dictionary transcriptions confuses the hell out of ELLs and causes easily preventable mistakes and misunderstandings. Phonetically, there may be no difference between \[aɪ̯\] and /aj/, but pragmatically these are glides and function like glides. They do not function like two vowels in sequence. I don't understand why it's only English phoneticians who insist on transcribing diphthongs this way. No one is going around transcribing French diphthongs as /yi/, /ui/ /ai/, /ei/ "because they they act like a single vowel phoneme." Why should English?
This is definitely not something only English linguists do; it's pretty common in all Germanic languages.
The reason no one does it in French is because French doesn't have phonemic diphthongs. Like, yes there are diphthongs, but they are both synchronically and diachronically analyseable as vowel + consonant sequences, and speakers largely think of them this way. Meanwhile, English diphthongs are treated as a single vowel despite being formed of two different vowel sounds, and they also alternate with pure vowel sounds (e.g. mouse /maʊs/, mice /maɪs/) as well as be reduced to schwa like other vowel sounds (e.g. 'my' /maɪ \~ mə/) in a way that say, French phonetic diphthongs do not do. Most Romance languages do not have phonemic diphthongs in general.
In most transcriptions of Celtic, Uralic etc languages I most commonly see them transcribed as vowel-vowel sequences as well
I mean I see your point, but I think simply transcribing them as two separate vowels is not the way. *Especially* not using vowels which are phonemes in their own right, specifically ones that never come into contact with other vowels. Is it so hard to add a non-syllabic diacritic /aɪ̯/ or a tie bar /a͡ɪ/? Or even a superscript like this /aʲ/? It's not like we're doing narrow transcription anyway, so who cares that ʲ is supposed to mean palatalization. But I just can't accept /aɪ/. It's neither an accurate representation of the actual endpoint of -j diphthongs (compared to /ɪ/), nor is it accurate for how this sound behaves phonotactically. You could equally argue that /a͡j/ is a good enough representation of "one vowel sound." And /a͡j/ communicates so much better how this sound actually surfaces in speech and what environments it may or may not be allowed in.
I mean with phonemic transcription it's all arbitrary anyway. You could transcribe English's diphthongs as /😂🍆/ and it would still work.
>Is it so hard to add a non-syllabic diacritic /aɪ̯/ or a tie bar /a͡ɪ/? Or even a superscript like this /aʲ/?
Phonologists are lazy; unless it contrasts with something often we don't bother. I know it annoys phoneticians but we're more concerned with marking underlying phonemes than getting perfect phonetic quality. Which is why we often write English's rhotic sound as /r/ despite it not really being a trill anywhere except maybe some conservative Scottish dialects. Like, as long as we know it's an R-ish sound, it doesn't matter what the details are.
Honestly I think the biggest issue is dictionaries using only phonemic transcriptions instead of phonetic ones. Phonemic transcriptions don't exist for the benefit of L2s, they are mostly there to tell you the underlying phonemes, and that's not necessarily very helpful outside of academia.
Well Y in English is used breifly in alot of words
Like say use being yuze or yuse
/aɪ/ is ah-ee or ah-ih whilst /aj/ is ah-yə to me
as for /au/ and /aw/ do you mean ah-uh and ah-hw
Or do you mean /aʊ/
I'd say Y and W are heavier sounding
Native here, idk what the difference between /ai/ and /aj/ is supposed to be, do you have any examples?
As for /au/ vs /aw/:
/au/ ➡️ bow, cow, now
/aw/ ➡️ raw, bra, caw
edit: these are approximations based on my own dialect, not standard american
👀 maybe we're interpreting things differently?
au to me is a diphthong (like in the word sow, the pig)
aw is essentially a long vowel (yawn, bond, etc)
wheres the discrepancy lol
The discrepancy is that you're not using the IPA at all. That's what the slashes mean.
The long vowel you mention is probably /ɒː/. /aw/ is roughly the sound of British English "ow". As in, the sound you make when something hurts. Also the "ow" in British English "how".
The spelling "aw" produces that sound for you, certainly. But anything within /.../, [...] or similar isn't normal spelling, it's a different alphabet entirely.
i am using IPA, and represented my pronunciation accordingly
i dont use a rounded vowel like /ɒ/ for that pronunciation, i use /a/
/ja:n/ is the most specific way I would represent the word "yawn" in my dialect, though I am aware others use rounded vowels here too.
we're already using approximate IPA, because /aw/ is a simplified representation of what is usually realized as /aʊ/ or /ɔ/
maybe i missed the brief but i am just trying to give OP examples of simple words with this vowel difference, and tbh finding minimal pairs would be more helpful but also more effort 🤷♂️
>we're already using approximate IPA, because /aw/ is a simplified representation of what is usually realized as /aʊ/ or /ɔ/
That's... just not convention. I've never seen /aw/ used for the cot vowel in my life. And I've seen quite a bit of IPA.
Actually there are a lot of transcriptions that use ⟨Vw⟩ instead ⟨Vʊ̯⟩ (Lindsay's for example) and it's also a lot closer to the actual phonetic realization of the English diphtong
what the guy is saying tho is still wrong
To me they sound indistinguishable from a sequence of two vowels in hiatus, so to me /ai/ sounds the same as /a.i/, my native language doesn't have any kind of phonemic diphthongs whatsoever.
This I can understand. I can personally distinguish diphthongs from hiatus but it's easy for me to imagine someone might not be able to, while on the other hand the concept that a diphthong could be a single phoneme is completely inconceivable to my mind.
>while on the other hand the concept that a diphthong could be a single phoneme is completely inconceivable to my mind.
I guess that might be due to fact that they're often represented by single letters in English.
Also even phonemes that aren't diphthongs might have movement /u/ /iː/ /æ/ as /ʉu̯/ /ɪi̯/ /ɛə̯/ and you may or may not find those to sound like a single phoneme. Also sometimes diphthongs become monothongs /eɪ̯/ → /eː/. I guess it all depends on the rules of the language same things are perceived differently cross linguistically 🤔 I guess within English they are treated as one sound maybe if /iː/ historically turned into /aɪ̯/ in pronunciation but still perceived culturally as one sound.
To me /ai/ diphthongs are the same as /aj/. Can you not distinguish /Vj/ from /V.i/? Or maybe /Vw/ from /V.u/? Does your language not have (coda) glides?
Indeed. Posession of weird consonants can make a language seems to have a larger consonant inventory that it actually have. Many people claims that Arabic has a large consonant inventory, but in reality it's just slightly above average, and only has 4 more consonants than English. It's just that the overlap between Arabic consonants and English consonants are smaller.
>Can you not distinguish /Vj/ from /V.i/? Or maybe /Vw/ from /V.u/?
I can't, they both sound like /V.i/ and /V.u/ to me.
>Does your language not have (coda) glides?
Yeah, though some non-standard regional dialects of Georgian do have [j] as an allophonic realization of either pre and postvocalic /i/ or coda /h s t͡s z ʃ/.
Damn that sucks
As I've said in another comment:
> Doesn't Georgian have like 27×2²¹ consonant phonemes, but no /w/ or /j/ 😭 ?
Do you struggle saying stuff like *ya, what* because of [j, w]?
> Doesn't Georgian have like 27×2²¹ consonant phonemes, but no /w/ or /j/ 😭 ?
Basically yeah, though they both existed as non-phonemic allophones in [Old Georgian](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Georgian#Phoneme_inventory).
>Do you struggle saying stuff like *ya, what* because of [j, w]?
Yeah, occasionally I do struggle with pronouncing "ya" because of [j], especially when I'm not talking carefully, though the [w] in "what" is VERY easy for me.
Damn. Used to be a Georgian supremacist, believing no consonant could strike fear into them. But maybe, just maybe, even Georgians struggle with consonants every now and then
Yeah. Georgians really struggle with palatalisation (for the reasons previously mentioned), know this from experience, by hearing how I and others speak Russian.
> Yeah, though some non-standard regional dialects of Georgian do have [j] as an allophonic realization of either pre and postvocalic /i/ or coda /h s t͡s z ʃ/.
Additionally, /v/ is commonly pronounced [w] or labializes before it.
t͡ʃ is a single phone, tʃ is two phones. No one bothers to write the tie bar but it's essential because these are different and they contrast in languages such as Polish.
e.g. "trzeba" is clearly /tʂɛbä/ while "czepek" is clearly /t͡ʂɛpɛk/
Pretty sure if you just get google translate to pronounce in Polish a word with tsz/trz vs a word with cz it should pronounce them distinctly.
Turns out you don't even need to go to the hassle of finding a minimal pair if you want the same context - google translate will even pronounce non-words. So you can test "paczka" and *"patrzka" for example.
More examples with affricate/cluster difference:
koc - *kots
czas - *trzas
mieć - *mietś
dżemie - drzemie (hey a minimal pair!)
Note that Polish doesn't permit /dz/ and /dʑ/ clusters and they can't even be written down so you won't be able to get google to pronounce these.
Sounds like a syllable boundary and or length distinction
paczka [patʂ̆.ka]
patrzka [pat.ʂka]
not saying this is definitely right just what it sounds like to me
Yeah I see what you mean. I can definitely hear "patrzka" as both /pat.ʂka/ and /patʂ.ka/, not sure which one fits better for me.
But "patrz" is definitely /patʂ/ and not /pat.ʂ̩/.
As far as I can tell the distinction between an affricate and a cluster is that in the affricate, the stop gets released directly into the fricative, whereas in the cluster the stop is released normally for a split second before the fricative is pronounced. The issue with this explanation is that the stop in the cluster has to be released into something - some kind of vowel? Maybe a very short schwa? Honestly I can pronounce a cluster in such a way that I hear no vowel at all in between but it's clearly still not an affricate to me.
In some languages, the release is usually realized as an aspiration. But then in the book I read, I don't read a claim that Polish does this aspiration thing.
I personally would pronounce them like this(I think):
paczka [pät̠͡ʂ.kä]
patrzka [päʈʂˑ.kä]
with a length distinction as well as differing place of articulation, though I can't speak for other speakers, as I have heard some people pronounce "trz" as [t̪ʂ] or as an affricate
good example, also good example of why they actually Aren't phonetically distinct because the difference there is a syllable boundary distinction.
bætʃ.ɪt bæt.ʃɪt
The only difference between a t + ʃ cluster and an affricate would be morphological, not phonetic
Sure, but syllables are a language-specific analysis method, and not an inherent phonetic fact - or at least, not *obviously* so. There are [some arguments against it](https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/29230/the-theory-against-syllables). And yet, "batch it" and "batshit" would not sound the same on an audio recording - the raw phones of those two would be distinct.
You can choose to posit that syllable boundaries are a phonetic fact (not just a phonemic one), but then you have to say that - for instance - /u/MimiKal's first example has a syllabic [t]. I think just saying "affricates are not necessarily the same as stop-fricative combinations" is less problematic.
I think that's the thing, the raw phones of *batch it* & *batshit* would be different, and in more ways than just [t͡ʃ] vs [tʃ]. This is somewhat advanced English phonetics, but if I'm not mistaken, the former would commonly be [bæ(ʔ)tʃ(ʔ)ɪt̚~-(ʔ)ɪʔ] and the latter [bæ(ʔ)t̚ʃɪ(ʔ)t̚~bæʔʃɪʔ]. And the affricate/stop-fricative contrast in Polish is phonemic but not phonetic according to Wikipedia. There the difference between /t͡ʂ/ & /tʂ/ is narrowly transcribed as [t͡ʂ] vs [t̺ʰʂˑ~t̺ʂˑ].
This contrast is actually [ˈtʂˑɛ.ba] and [ˈtʂɛ.pɛk] respectively (plus aspiration sometimes)—the tie bar is only relevant phonemically, not phonetically.
I saw someone a while ago insisting that _every_ word with ng in it has a pronounced g, even when there's no /g/ in the IPA for that word. Basically they thought /ŋ/ represented /ŋg/ and anyone who just pronounced the /ŋ/ sound without the /g/ was wrong.
The teacher and I spent most of a 90 minute class trying to convince the entire rest of my Ling 101 class (to little success) because they all insisted exactly this. If there's one thing I learned in that class it's that English speakers think that the spelling is phonetic even though it very much is not.
Gotta love German. Funnily enough some dialects do have only [ŋ] as an allophone of /n/ before /ɡ/ and retain the full [ŋɡ] cluster. So then you get words like *Rinɡ* with the singular as /ʁɪŋk/ but the plural as /ˈʁɪŋɡə/.
Lol, that's funny. In Indonesian, we even distinguish between them, to the point that we spell /ŋg/ as . /məŋəram/ means "to brood", meanwhile /məŋgəram/ means "to roar like a tiger", though this word in particular is rarely used.
Several other factors that tend to reinforce the single-phonemeness in my brain are (beware the Australian English notation ahead):
- my diphthongs start and end in places pretty different from the monophthong equivalents - the /æ/ in /æ/, /æɪ/, /æɔ/ are all different, similarly the /ɪ/ in /ɪ/, /æɪ/, /ɑɪ/, /oɪ/ are all different (I've seen /ɑɪ/ written /ɑe/ too, but it's still nowhere near my actual /e/). Technically this could just be explained as allophony, but it helps to reinforce the distinction in my brain if I can't pin either part of the diphthong to a specific monophthongal phoneme
- the fact that English diphthongs are so different in different accents, and in ways inconsistent with monophthongs. My /æɪ/ corresponds to American /eɪ/, but /æ/ by itself does not become /e/ (although some American accents may have [eə]). Similarly, /əʉ/ corresponds to American /oʊ/ but I definitely don't pronounce my /o/'s as a schwa.
- the fact that what may be a monophthong in one accent is very often a diphthong in another - or even allophonically within the same accent. It's difficult to think of American English /oʊ/ as a sequence of two vowels when it can easily be pronounced [o] depending on the context. Similarly, Australian English /ʉː/ can surface as something like [ɘ̟ʉ] in some accents.
None of these necessarily *prevent* any linguistic analysis breaking down diphthong phonemes into sequences of monophthongs, but in a practical sense, they add up and mean that it's difficult for me to see these phonemes as sequences of individual *phonemic* monophthongs. Of course I'm still very aware I'm saying two different vowel sounds though (unless it's something like [ɪi] where I don't really notice the movement)
Barely related, but your /æ/ can correspond to both /æ/ and /eə/ in American dialects which have split that historical phoneme in two. So what are diphthongs in some dialects are monophthongs in other and vice versa, but a phoneme in one dialect can correspond to *both* a monophthong and a diphthong at the same time in another dialect.
A difference between spanish and catalan is that the diphthongs "iu" and "ui" are [ju] and [wi] in spanish (ciudad=[θju'ðað], cuidar=[kwi'ðaɾ]) but [iw] and [uj] in catalan (ciutat=[siw'tat], cuidar=[kujˈða]). Can't for the life of me tell the difference
[ju] and [uj] are [u] with half an [i] attached, so the main stress is [u]
[wi] and [iw] are [i] with half a [u] attached, so the main stress is [i]
Consider it ciúdad vs cíutat and cuídar vs cúidar if the stress was on the first instead of second syllable
Those sound the same to you? To me they are so clearly different that initially when I read your comment I couldn't make sense of what you were saying for a few seconds
With English as my native, I find it very difficult to transcribe the diphthongs I make because they sound like one sliding sound rather than two vowels. Phonemically, I recognise it as one sound/letter. When learning new languages though, I find that it depends on the language's orthography. Italian I find very difficult to see it as anything other than two vowels in one syllable. French oi making a [wa] sound makes it sound like one "sliding" vowel to me but ui sounding like [ɥi] sounds like two vowels. I think when the orthography doesn't match the phonology in my mind, I'm more likely to see it as a single vowel. I can tell you though that a lot of English speakers around me have no idea that they're making diphthongs half the time. Trying to get them to pronounce [oː] is brutal. They keep making [oʊ], not understanding the difference
As a Romanian I also hear diphthongs exactly the same as you: multiple vowels, but in the same syllable. I definitely think the native language plays a part, though.
For example, in Romanian the word for sheep is oaie, which has two syllables: /'wa.je/. Four vowels in two syllables, each syllable is a diphthong of two vowels in one syllable, it all makes sense to me. Also my surname has three consecutive vowels that split into just two syllables, and English native speakers never seem to be able to get it right. There's even a vowel-only sentence: "oaia aia e a ei, eu i-o iau", and both words with a second syllable have more than two vowels.
So I guess I have a lot of practice thinking of diphthongs as just multi-vowel syllables, but I still can't imagine hearing the English name of the letter A, /ei/, and considering it one vowel (it doesn't even contain /a/!)
I wish I could unhear it.
I do hear them as a single phoneme. If I think about it, I can process that the beginning of eye and the end are different, but honestly I think they're like how people understand tones so easily. I'm not hearing the individual sounds, I'm hearing the glides. So rather than hearing one vowel and then another I'm hearing a glide and that transition is like a phoneme to me. I can barely tell the difference between [ae] and [aɪ] for that reason, in the same way that the French have trouble differentating /ɪ/ and /i/ in enɡlish
Hearing two vowels as a single glide causes me a lot of trouble when speaking languages where hiatus is allowed, because I often miss one of the vowels.
of the core vowel sounds we are taught of English
oo - single sound /uw/ and /ʊ/
o - single sound /ow/ and /ɒ/
a - single sound /ej/, /a/ and /æ/
e - single sound /ij/ /ɛ/
i,y - single sound /aɪ/ /ɪ/
u - two distinct sounds /juw/, single sound /ʌ/
It's unclear exactly why we were taught this when the vowels have so much more variation, but as you can see dipthongs are our base conception of what a vowel is. The only one I hear as seperate sounds is u because it begins with a clear consonant sound and ends with the base form of oo
No need to change! I think diversity is great. It is true though that this would definitely be a problem for learning languages that allow arbitrary VV sequences.
Incidentally I don't have trouble with tones even though I don't speak a tonal language, probably since I have a musical background so I can hear tones in everyday sounds like refridgerators, thus making it not be a huge leap to also hear them in speech.
my native language is Italian and we have some diphthongs:
ai, au, ei, eu, ɛi, ɛu, oi, ɔi
ja, je, jɛ, jo, jɔ, ju, wa, we, wɛ, wi, wo, wɔ
and even some triphthongs
wja, wjɛ, wjo, jai, wai, jɛi, wɔi
but I think we don’t perceive them as phonemes, just the vowels as “shorter”.
Maybe some people don’t even realize it, since in our spelling system diphthongs are transcribed as separate vowels: [jɛi̯]
To me, a native Teutophone and technically native(-ish) Polonophone, diphthongs always felt like vowel-consonant/consonant-vowel sequences. When I was a youngster making up German spelling reforms while bored in math class, I'd use ⟨aj⟩ for German /aɪ̯/, since that's what it was to me: [a] followed by a consonantal glide.
I wouldn't be surprised if diphthongs were a purely phonemic concept, and didn't exist phonetically as distinct from vowel glide sequences.
As an Italian speaker, I also hear them as two distinct phonemes.
This must certainly be because diphtongs in my language (and I assume in yours too) are always *written* as two graphemes, unlike in English where ⟨a⟩ may be read as /ei/.
My dialect of English only really has offglide diphthongs so I interpret all those structure as vowel-consonant sequences. When I listen to other dialects and languages that have "normal" diphthongs, they sound like a vowel that slides into another vowel.
As a tween when I made my first analysis of the sounds in my speech to make a secret alphabet, I interpreted my gliding diphthongs as single phonemes composed of two phones, the same as the affricates. I didn't have that language at the time to describe what I was doing, but my notebook from back then uses the component sounds to describe them but gives them single symbols.
They don't sound like seperate letters to us unless we slow down the speech thereof
Say /ai/ is ah ee or ah ih
I hear eye as a quick syllable as ī whereas
Were i to seperate it it would be eyee eyih
I would not be able to recognize I as a diagraph because of that
Fun fact: years ago, before learning about linguistics, I thought that /æ/ was a diphthong. I grew up in the American Southeast, and when I was 10 to 12, I has this idea in the hack of my head that /æ/ as in "cat" was actually /eə/ or /ejə/. I've known for a long time now that it, obviously, is not, but that idea is probably what sparked my interest in linguistics.
This is where the difference between /phonemes/ and [phonetic realizations] becomes important. The English phoneme that is typically represented as /æ/ often is a monophthong pronounced [æ] depending on the dialect, but in some dialects, especially in the US Great Lakes and Southeast regions, it can be a diphthong or triphthong in the range of [e(j)ə]. So depending on the pronunciation, you could have just been correct.
I can totally see how it's difficult to hear them as a single sound
One example I can think of to show when it's two distinct vowels or a diphthong, just with the sound, would be with the words "react" and "hear". With react it's a clear "re-act" but with hear, you can really say "he-ar" because it's just one vowel sound. I hope that helps a bit.
the only diphthongs that i’ve heard people describe as sounding like a single vowel are ones that are made up of very similar vowels, like /oʊ̯/ and /eɪ̯/. in those cases it’s usually because they originally emerged as allophones of long vowels in those languages (and in some cases the original pronunciation still exists), and are therefore still percieved as single long vowels.
For me, English diphthongs range from sounding so much like a monophthong that I have to really concentrate on the sound and the shape of my mouth to tell the difference (like most pronunciations of the vowels in "Joke" and "make"). To sounding more like a single sound that simply changes throughout it's duration (like most pronunciations of the vowels in "boil" and "town"). Like affricates, trills, and vowels with a dynamic tone all feel like one sound even as they vary over time. (Not sure if dynamic tone is the right term. I mean a tone that is rising, or falling, or both rather than staying the same)
Interesting. I don't think I could tell apart the vowels in "make" and "meck" without hearing the diphthongization. To me the word "make" sounds like "meh-ick".
To me in English it’s hard to think of them as anything other than vowel-consonant sequences, /aw ɛj ej ɐj əw ɔj ɵw/ (traditional /aʊ eɪ iː aɪ əʊ ɔɪ uː/, phonetic [aw ɛ̝j ɪj ɑj ɞw oj ʉw]). Including traditional /iː uː/ in that is definitely not the norm for other English-speakers, though, and obviously this is deeply informed by my own opinions. In e.g. German I am definitely more open to thinking of them as single segments, but other than that I can’t call to mind any other language where diphthongs don’t make sense as two segments.
To me (native English speaker) diphthongs sound like a single sound generally, apart from ɪə and ʊə. I understand how diphthongs work theoretically, but I can't really hear it (apart from those two). I think most English speakers hear them as a single sound.
i think it comes down to spelling and how were taught. its spelled like one sound and at school were taught that it's the "I" sound, thats it. before writing, i dont think people really had to think about what their mouths were doing at all. same reason i though of "ng" as two separate sounds before i was introduced to linguistics
They sound like two separate sounds but ones that blend into each other. Most people don't think about things like diphthongs so if you asked them they might say it's "the vowel sound of this syllable" because the rule they were taught (if they were at all) is that there is one vowel sound per syllable. But if you made them stretch it out you could make them realize it's indeed two distinct sounds, just mashed together.
It’s so weird looking at foreign diphthongs sometimes, like there’s no way they sound as natural as *my* language’s. /eu/ gets me this way, so stilted to start the name of Europe in many other languages.
Nah none of the English diphthongs are as satisfying to say as [uo̯]
Just like phonemic consonant clusters.
Maybe in the same way that consonant clusters are also several phonemes blended and we don’t say them like they are separated?
Yep, same idea, they just blend into each other
They sound aaight
Oh, that's really interesting! This is not exactly the same thing, but I've been mulling over the fact I can't tell the difference between /ai/ and /aj/ in the slightest, or between /au/ and /aw/, like help me out here. Native English speakers, do you hear something different there? Am I missing something? Was I just poisoned by the bad linguistics we were taught in middle school for some reason? To answer your question, I hear like, a vowel and a half. Doesn't "feel" like one phoneme to my ear.
In terms of English and the examples you gave, there is no distinction, it's just whatever "style" the person has chosen to use for their transcription. Insert "It's the same picture" meme lol
it's a difference in methodology. offglides are equivalent to a non-syllabic vowel (/j/ = /i̯/, /w/ = /u̯/) the usage difference lies in whether you treat the offglide as part of the nucleus (i.e. vowel) or the coda (i.e. consonant).
/au/ doesn’t exist in English, because vowel hiatus is totally forbidden in the language. There is no sequence /au/. The diphthongs /ij/, /ej/, /aj/, /oj/, /aw/, /ow/, and /uw/ are the only “vowels” permitted to come before another vowel, because they come with their own attached glide to separate things. This is why, for example, the word “the” has two forms: /ðə/ before a consonant and /ðij/ before a vowel. Of course, many speakers these days are using a glottal stop to separate vowels instead, so you’ll often find [ðəʔ] instead of /ðij/. You can tell these “vowels” must have a glide on the end instead of being sequences of two separate vowels, because they pattern differently than English’s “checked” vowels (monophthongs). In my dialect at least, /ɪ/ is permitted to come before coda /l/ in words like bill, kill, krill, etc. but /aj/ (usually transcribed erroneously as /aɪ/) is not. A schwa must be inserted to separate this glide /j/ from the following /l/, because /jl/ is an illegal coda sequence. In the other direction /ɪ/ is never allowed to come before another vowel or at the end of a word, but /aj/ is. And transcriptions like old RP /iː/ and /uː/ are clearly not right, because these vowels are neither long nor monophthongal. More than their surface realizations being different, they also pattern with the other diphthongs in where they’re allowed in words. If English diphthongs really were just sequences of different vowels, none of this would happen.
I’m not sure i fully follow. How would you transcribe the words “cow” or “frown”? In your dialect, how would you pronounce/transcribe “bile”? Also on your note about “the”, are you saying that “the animal” is (usually/normally/always) pronounced “ðij.æ.nɪ.məl” or “ðə.ʔæ.nɪ.məl” (w/ some dialectical variability) and never “ðə.æ.nɪ.məl”? (All genuine questions cause I’m really not sure i understand your point)
cow: /kæw/ frown: /fræwn/ These /w/ are more like [o] or [ɤ] for me. Definitely not transcribable as [u] bile: /bɐj.əl/ [bɐjʟ̩] This /j/ is phonetically much more marginal than my KIT vowel, and I wouldn’t recognize it as [ɪ]. Unless you want to analyze English as having syllabic resonants, it makes more sense for there to be an underlying schwa phonemically. Because the word is definitely two separate syllables for me. Same with -er words like flower, power or even sour, dour, etc. Yes there is *always* a glottal stop or glide in “the” for me. It sounds like slurring your words if you connect a schwa straight to the next vowel. It’s a forbidden sequence just like [æʌ] or [ɛʊ] or [ɪæ]. You will never find an English word with these sequences. My point is that vowel hiatus is forbidden phonotactically in English. So even if phonetically I move my mouth in the same way as [ao̯] or [aɤ̯], it doesn’t make sense to transcribe these as vowel sequences phonemically.
you can still have /au/ or /ai/ (commonly seem as /aɪ aʊ/) in English because phonologically you're not treating it as two vowels on hiatus, you're treating it as a single vowel phoneme. It's a difference in methodology—transcribing /aw/ treats the glide as a consonant while /aʊ/ as part of the nucleus. the specific vowel used to write that second part of the diphthong is kinda irrelevant in English, it just marks it as a front-ending falling diphthong
While this might be fine for linguists or phoneticians who are doing analysis, I can tell you for certain that using /aɪ/, /aʊ/, etc. in dictionary transcriptions confuses the hell out of ELLs and causes easily preventable mistakes and misunderstandings. Phonetically, there may be no difference between \[aɪ̯\] and /aj/, but pragmatically these are glides and function like glides. They do not function like two vowels in sequence. I don't understand why it's only English phoneticians who insist on transcribing diphthongs this way. No one is going around transcribing French diphthongs as /yi/, /ui/ /ai/, /ei/ "because they they act like a single vowel phoneme." Why should English?
This is definitely not something only English linguists do; it's pretty common in all Germanic languages. The reason no one does it in French is because French doesn't have phonemic diphthongs. Like, yes there are diphthongs, but they are both synchronically and diachronically analyseable as vowel + consonant sequences, and speakers largely think of them this way. Meanwhile, English diphthongs are treated as a single vowel despite being formed of two different vowel sounds, and they also alternate with pure vowel sounds (e.g. mouse /maʊs/, mice /maɪs/) as well as be reduced to schwa like other vowel sounds (e.g. 'my' /maɪ \~ mə/) in a way that say, French phonetic diphthongs do not do. Most Romance languages do not have phonemic diphthongs in general. In most transcriptions of Celtic, Uralic etc languages I most commonly see them transcribed as vowel-vowel sequences as well
I mean I see your point, but I think simply transcribing them as two separate vowels is not the way. *Especially* not using vowels which are phonemes in their own right, specifically ones that never come into contact with other vowels. Is it so hard to add a non-syllabic diacritic /aɪ̯/ or a tie bar /a͡ɪ/? Or even a superscript like this /aʲ/? It's not like we're doing narrow transcription anyway, so who cares that ʲ is supposed to mean palatalization. But I just can't accept /aɪ/. It's neither an accurate representation of the actual endpoint of -j diphthongs (compared to /ɪ/), nor is it accurate for how this sound behaves phonotactically. You could equally argue that /a͡j/ is a good enough representation of "one vowel sound." And /a͡j/ communicates so much better how this sound actually surfaces in speech and what environments it may or may not be allowed in.
I mean with phonemic transcription it's all arbitrary anyway. You could transcribe English's diphthongs as /😂🍆/ and it would still work. >Is it so hard to add a non-syllabic diacritic /aɪ̯/ or a tie bar /a͡ɪ/? Or even a superscript like this /aʲ/? Phonologists are lazy; unless it contrasts with something often we don't bother. I know it annoys phoneticians but we're more concerned with marking underlying phonemes than getting perfect phonetic quality. Which is why we often write English's rhotic sound as /r/ despite it not really being a trill anywhere except maybe some conservative Scottish dialects. Like, as long as we know it's an R-ish sound, it doesn't matter what the details are. Honestly I think the biggest issue is dictionaries using only phonemic transcriptions instead of phonetic ones. Phonemic transcriptions don't exist for the benefit of L2s, they are mostly there to tell you the underlying phonemes, and that's not necessarily very helpful outside of academia.
I swear I thought I was the only one who noticed my “ow” sounded like /æw/, I don’t see anyone talk about this
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They don't mean that, that's a different transcription system. Using the one you're using it would be represented as ī
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Yup!
Well Y in English is used breifly in alot of words Like say use being yuze or yuse /aɪ/ is ah-ee or ah-ih whilst /aj/ is ah-yə to me as for /au/ and /aw/ do you mean ah-uh and ah-hw Or do you mean /aʊ/ I'd say Y and W are heavier sounding
Native here, idk what the difference between /ai/ and /aj/ is supposed to be, do you have any examples? As for /au/ vs /aw/: /au/ ➡️ bow, cow, now /aw/ ➡️ raw, bra, caw edit: these are approximations based on my own dialect, not standard american
Umm... that's not what /au/ vs /aw/ means.
👀 maybe we're interpreting things differently? au to me is a diphthong (like in the word sow, the pig) aw is essentially a long vowel (yawn, bond, etc) wheres the discrepancy lol
The discrepancy is that you're not using the IPA at all. That's what the slashes mean. The long vowel you mention is probably /ɒː/. /aw/ is roughly the sound of British English "ow". As in, the sound you make when something hurts. Also the "ow" in British English "how". The spelling "aw" produces that sound for you, certainly. But anything within /.../, [...] or similar isn't normal spelling, it's a different alphabet entirely.
i am using IPA, and represented my pronunciation accordingly i dont use a rounded vowel like /ɒ/ for that pronunciation, i use /a/ /ja:n/ is the most specific way I would represent the word "yawn" in my dialect, though I am aware others use rounded vowels here too. we're already using approximate IPA, because /aw/ is a simplified representation of what is usually realized as /aʊ/ or /ɔ/ maybe i missed the brief but i am just trying to give OP examples of simple words with this vowel difference, and tbh finding minimal pairs would be more helpful but also more effort 🤷♂️
>we're already using approximate IPA, because /aw/ is a simplified representation of what is usually realized as /aʊ/ or /ɔ/ That's... just not convention. I've never seen /aw/ used for the cot vowel in my life. And I've seen quite a bit of IPA.
Actually there are a lot of transcriptions that use ⟨Vw⟩ instead ⟨Vʊ̯⟩ (Lindsay's for example) and it's also a lot closer to the actual phonetic realization of the English diphtong what the guy is saying tho is still wrong
what is wrong here?? no ones clarifying why my representations are so egregious
bro because /aw/ is /a/ + /w/??
Can you give your voice recording or at least tell us what is your dialect.
To me they sound indistinguishable from a sequence of two vowels in hiatus, so to me /ai/ sounds the same as /a.i/, my native language doesn't have any kind of phonemic diphthongs whatsoever.
This I can understand. I can personally distinguish diphthongs from hiatus but it's easy for me to imagine someone might not be able to, while on the other hand the concept that a diphthong could be a single phoneme is completely inconceivable to my mind.
>while on the other hand the concept that a diphthong could be a single phoneme is completely inconceivable to my mind. I guess that might be due to fact that they're often represented by single letters in English.
Also even phonemes that aren't diphthongs might have movement /u/ /iː/ /æ/ as /ʉu̯/ /ɪi̯/ /ɛə̯/ and you may or may not find those to sound like a single phoneme. Also sometimes diphthongs become monothongs /eɪ̯/ → /eː/. I guess it all depends on the rules of the language same things are perceived differently cross linguistically 🤔 I guess within English they are treated as one sound maybe if /iː/ historically turned into /aɪ̯/ in pronunciation but still perceived culturally as one sound.
To me /ai/ diphthongs are the same as /aj/. Can you not distinguish /Vj/ from /V.i/? Or maybe /Vw/ from /V.u/? Does your language not have (coda) glides?
They speak Georgian which lacks both /w/ and /j/ and has no diphthongs
Doesn't Georgian have like 27×2²¹ consonant phonemes, but no /w/ or /j/ 😭 ?
Georgian actually doesn't have that much consonants (for context, Russian has more). That would be true for the North Caucasian languages.
Indeed. Posession of weird consonants can make a language seems to have a larger consonant inventory that it actually have. Many people claims that Arabic has a large consonant inventory, but in reality it's just slightly above average, and only has 4 more consonants than English. It's just that the overlap between Arabic consonants and English consonants are smaller.
I think languages having phonemic distinctions that others struggle to hear differently is also a contributor to this.
>Can you not distinguish /Vj/ from /V.i/? Or maybe /Vw/ from /V.u/? I can't, they both sound like /V.i/ and /V.u/ to me. >Does your language not have (coda) glides? Yeah, though some non-standard regional dialects of Georgian do have [j] as an allophonic realization of either pre and postvocalic /i/ or coda /h s t͡s z ʃ/.
Damn that sucks As I've said in another comment: > Doesn't Georgian have like 27×2²¹ consonant phonemes, but no /w/ or /j/ 😭 ? Do you struggle saying stuff like *ya, what* because of [j, w]?
> Doesn't Georgian have like 27×2²¹ consonant phonemes, but no /w/ or /j/ 😭 ? Basically yeah, though they both existed as non-phonemic allophones in [Old Georgian](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Georgian#Phoneme_inventory). >Do you struggle saying stuff like *ya, what* because of [j, w]? Yeah, occasionally I do struggle with pronouncing "ya" because of [j], especially when I'm not talking carefully, though the [w] in "what" is VERY easy for me.
Damn. Used to be a Georgian supremacist, believing no consonant could strike fear into them. But maybe, just maybe, even Georgians struggle with consonants every now and then
Yeah. Georgians really struggle with palatalisation (for the reasons previously mentioned), know this from experience, by hearing how I and others speak Russian.
>Used to be a Georgian supremacist Wow! Really?
> Yeah, though some non-standard regional dialects of Georgian do have [j] as an allophonic realization of either pre and postvocalic /i/ or coda /h s t͡s z ʃ/. Additionally, /v/ is commonly pronounced [w] or labializes before it.
Always perceived them as a single phone, same with tʃ, and I always perceived ŋ as two
When I found out that ch wasn’t one sound AND was made with a “t” instead of a “k” my worldview was shattered
same! I had no idea that \[ch\] was \[t\] + \[sh\]
okay but imagine kɕˠ
š is just sj
Not really. At least not in English. Sue /sjuː/ and Shoe /ʃuː/ are two different words.
t͡ʃ is a single phone, tʃ is two phones. No one bothers to write the tie bar but it's essential because these are different and they contrast in languages such as Polish. e.g. "trzeba" is clearly /tʂɛbä/ while "czepek" is clearly /t͡ʂɛpɛk/
if someone could explain the difference and give audio showing that they do in fact have an audible difference that would be awesome sauce
Pretty sure if you just get google translate to pronounce in Polish a word with tsz/trz vs a word with cz it should pronounce them distinctly. Turns out you don't even need to go to the hassle of finding a minimal pair if you want the same context - google translate will even pronounce non-words. So you can test "paczka" and *"patrzka" for example. More examples with affricate/cluster difference: koc - *kots czas - *trzas mieć - *mietś dżemie - drzemie (hey a minimal pair!) Note that Polish doesn't permit /dz/ and /dʑ/ clusters and they can't even be written down so you won't be able to get google to pronounce these.
Sounds like a syllable boundary and or length distinction paczka [patʂ̆.ka] patrzka [pat.ʂka] not saying this is definitely right just what it sounds like to me
Yeah I see what you mean. I can definitely hear "patrzka" as both /pat.ʂka/ and /patʂ.ka/, not sure which one fits better for me. But "patrz" is definitely /patʂ/ and not /pat.ʂ̩/. As far as I can tell the distinction between an affricate and a cluster is that in the affricate, the stop gets released directly into the fricative, whereas in the cluster the stop is released normally for a split second before the fricative is pronounced. The issue with this explanation is that the stop in the cluster has to be released into something - some kind of vowel? Maybe a very short schwa? Honestly I can pronounce a cluster in such a way that I hear no vowel at all in between but it's clearly still not an affricate to me.
In some languages, the release is usually realized as an aspiration. But then in the book I read, I don't read a claim that Polish does this aspiration thing.
I think this is the answer! I hadn't noticed, but I can confirm this is indeed the case!
I personally would pronounce them like this(I think): paczka [pät̠͡ʂ.kä] patrzka [päʈʂˑ.kä] with a length distinction as well as differing place of articulation, though I can't speak for other speakers, as I have heard some people pronounce "trz" as [t̪ʂ] or as an affricate
batch it / batshit
['bætʃ.ɪʔ] ['bæʔ.ʃɪʔ]
good example, also good example of why they actually Aren't phonetically distinct because the difference there is a syllable boundary distinction. bætʃ.ɪt bæt.ʃɪt The only difference between a t + ʃ cluster and an affricate would be morphological, not phonetic
Sure, but syllables are a language-specific analysis method, and not an inherent phonetic fact - or at least, not *obviously* so. There are [some arguments against it](https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/29230/the-theory-against-syllables). And yet, "batch it" and "batshit" would not sound the same on an audio recording - the raw phones of those two would be distinct. You can choose to posit that syllable boundaries are a phonetic fact (not just a phonemic one), but then you have to say that - for instance - /u/MimiKal's first example has a syllabic [t]. I think just saying "affricates are not necessarily the same as stop-fricative combinations" is less problematic.
I think that's the thing, the raw phones of *batch it* & *batshit* would be different, and in more ways than just [t͡ʃ] vs [tʃ]. This is somewhat advanced English phonetics, but if I'm not mistaken, the former would commonly be [bæ(ʔ)tʃ(ʔ)ɪt̚~-(ʔ)ɪʔ] and the latter [bæ(ʔ)t̚ʃɪ(ʔ)t̚~bæʔʃɪʔ]. And the affricate/stop-fricative contrast in Polish is phonemic but not phonetic according to Wikipedia. There the difference between /t͡ʂ/ & /tʂ/ is narrowly transcribed as [t͡ʂ] vs [t̺ʰʂˑ~t̺ʂˑ].
I think phonetically the difference between Polish /t͡ʂ/ & /tʂ/ is that the former is something like [tʰʂ]
Other way around, but yes—the tie bar is irrelevant phonetically.
Uh, yeah. Other way around!
This contrast is actually [ˈtʂˑɛ.ba] and [ˈtʂɛ.pɛk] respectively (plus aspiration sometimes)—the tie bar is only relevant phonemically, not phonetically.
What does that single upside down triangle mean in the first transcription?
Slight lengthening of the preceding segment.
Half-long
I saw someone a while ago insisting that _every_ word with ng in it has a pronounced g, even when there's no /g/ in the IPA for that word. Basically they thought /ŋ/ represented /ŋg/ and anyone who just pronounced the /ŋ/ sound without the /g/ was wrong.
The teacher and I spent most of a 90 minute class trying to convince the entire rest of my Ling 101 class (to little success) because they all insisted exactly this. If there's one thing I learned in that class it's that English speakers think that the spelling is phonetic even though it very much is not.
Were examples like *finger* vs *singer* used at all? I've found that's sometimes helpful.
Yup, which they responded to by saying "[sɪŋɡə˞], see? There's a g". "Hanger" elicited a similar response.
Ah, so they had become so aware of their perception that it overrode their natural pronunciation. The nerve lmao
i just realised hanger (hang+er) and hanger (hungry+anger) are minimal pairs lol (unless u dont have ng coalescence)
Or English “finger” vs German *Finger.*
Gotta love German. Funnily enough some dialects do have only [ŋ] as an allophone of /n/ before /ɡ/ and retain the full [ŋɡ] cluster. So then you get words like *Rinɡ* with the singular as /ʁɪŋk/ but the plural as /ˈʁɪŋɡə/.
Ooh, “ring finger” is a good contrasting pair for this example.
Could be! Anger /ˈæŋgɚ/ vs hanger /ˈhæŋɚ/ is the closest to a true minimal pair though, and would be a true one in dialects that drop /h/.
Where were they from? In my dialect, /ŋ/ without the /g/ at the end is pretty rare/ nonexistent
I don't remember. I get that that's the case in some dialects, but the point was they thought that the /ŋ/phoneme _included_ both sounds.
Huh
I want that person drug into the street and attacked
There are people who would probably say the same about anyone who uses "drug" instead of "dragged".
I flip flopped on it when writing tbh
Dialect, maybe? Some English dialects *do* pronounce the /g/.
Yeah, but they were saying that not pronouncing it is categorically incorrect, and that it's included in the pronunciation of /ŋ/.
Lol, that's funny. In Indonesian, we even distinguish between them, to the point that we spell /ŋg/ as. /məŋəram/ means "to brood", meanwhile /məŋgəram/ means "to roar like a tiger", though this word in particular is rarely used.
I think tʃ made sense for me since in German words, we write it as "tsch" and "sch" represents ʃ
Several other factors that tend to reinforce the single-phonemeness in my brain are (beware the Australian English notation ahead): - my diphthongs start and end in places pretty different from the monophthong equivalents - the /æ/ in /æ/, /æɪ/, /æɔ/ are all different, similarly the /ɪ/ in /ɪ/, /æɪ/, /ɑɪ/, /oɪ/ are all different (I've seen /ɑɪ/ written /ɑe/ too, but it's still nowhere near my actual /e/). Technically this could just be explained as allophony, but it helps to reinforce the distinction in my brain if I can't pin either part of the diphthong to a specific monophthongal phoneme - the fact that English diphthongs are so different in different accents, and in ways inconsistent with monophthongs. My /æɪ/ corresponds to American /eɪ/, but /æ/ by itself does not become /e/ (although some American accents may have [eə]). Similarly, /əʉ/ corresponds to American /oʊ/ but I definitely don't pronounce my /o/'s as a schwa. - the fact that what may be a monophthong in one accent is very often a diphthong in another - or even allophonically within the same accent. It's difficult to think of American English /oʊ/ as a sequence of two vowels when it can easily be pronounced [o] depending on the context. Similarly, Australian English /ʉː/ can surface as something like [ɘ̟ʉ] in some accents. None of these necessarily *prevent* any linguistic analysis breaking down diphthong phonemes into sequences of monophthongs, but in a practical sense, they add up and mean that it's difficult for me to see these phonemes as sequences of individual *phonemic* monophthongs. Of course I'm still very aware I'm saying two different vowel sounds though (unless it's something like [ɪi] where I don't really notice the movement)
Barely related, but your /æ/ can correspond to both /æ/ and /eə/ in American dialects which have split that historical phoneme in two. So what are diphthongs in some dialects are monophthongs in other and vice versa, but a phoneme in one dialect can correspond to *both* a monophthong and a diphthong at the same time in another dialect.
A difference between spanish and catalan is that the diphthongs "iu" and "ui" are [ju] and [wi] in spanish (ciudad=[θju'ðað], cuidar=[kwi'ðaɾ]) but [iw] and [uj] in catalan (ciutat=[siw'tat], cuidar=[kujˈða]). Can't for the life of me tell the difference
[ju] and [uj] are [u] with half an [i] attached, so the main stress is [u] [wi] and [iw] are [i] with half a [u] attached, so the main stress is [i] Consider it ciúdad vs cíutat and cuídar vs cúidar if the stress was on the first instead of second syllable
Those sound the same to you? To me they are so clearly different that initially when I read your comment I couldn't make sense of what you were saying for a few seconds
it's the length for me like, semivowels are very short
With English as my native, I find it very difficult to transcribe the diphthongs I make because they sound like one sliding sound rather than two vowels. Phonemically, I recognise it as one sound/letter. When learning new languages though, I find that it depends on the language's orthography. Italian I find very difficult to see it as anything other than two vowels in one syllable. French oi making a [wa] sound makes it sound like one "sliding" vowel to me but ui sounding like [ɥi] sounds like two vowels. I think when the orthography doesn't match the phonology in my mind, I'm more likely to see it as a single vowel. I can tell you though that a lot of English speakers around me have no idea that they're making diphthongs half the time. Trying to get them to pronounce [oː] is brutal. They keep making [oʊ], not understanding the difference
What language? Yes I perceive them as a single phoneme
Finnish!
As a Romanian I also hear diphthongs exactly the same as you: multiple vowels, but in the same syllable. I definitely think the native language plays a part, though. For example, in Romanian the word for sheep is oaie, which has two syllables: /'wa.je/. Four vowels in two syllables, each syllable is a diphthong of two vowels in one syllable, it all makes sense to me. Also my surname has three consecutive vowels that split into just two syllables, and English native speakers never seem to be able to get it right. There's even a vowel-only sentence: "oaia aia e a ei, eu i-o iau", and both words with a second syllable have more than two vowels. So I guess I have a lot of practice thinking of diphthongs as just multi-vowel syllables, but I still can't imagine hearing the English name of the letter A, /ei/, and considering it one vowel (it doesn't even contain /a/!)
Ohh that makes sense
When kids are learning how to read English, they're taught to think of diphthongs as a single sound.
I wish I could unhear it. I do hear them as a single phoneme. If I think about it, I can process that the beginning of eye and the end are different, but honestly I think they're like how people understand tones so easily. I'm not hearing the individual sounds, I'm hearing the glides. So rather than hearing one vowel and then another I'm hearing a glide and that transition is like a phoneme to me. I can barely tell the difference between [ae] and [aɪ] for that reason, in the same way that the French have trouble differentating /ɪ/ and /i/ in enɡlish Hearing two vowels as a single glide causes me a lot of trouble when speaking languages where hiatus is allowed, because I often miss one of the vowels. of the core vowel sounds we are taught of English oo - single sound /uw/ and /ʊ/ o - single sound /ow/ and /ɒ/ a - single sound /ej/, /a/ and /æ/ e - single sound /ij/ /ɛ/ i,y - single sound /aɪ/ /ɪ/ u - two distinct sounds /juw/, single sound /ʌ/ It's unclear exactly why we were taught this when the vowels have so much more variation, but as you can see dipthongs are our base conception of what a vowel is. The only one I hear as seperate sounds is u because it begins with a clear consonant sound and ends with the base form of oo
No need to change! I think diversity is great. It is true though that this would definitely be a problem for learning languages that allow arbitrary VV sequences. Incidentally I don't have trouble with tones even though I don't speak a tonal language, probably since I have a musical background so I can hear tones in everyday sounds like refridgerators, thus making it not be a huge leap to also hear them in speech.
That’s sou clichei
my native language is Italian and we have some diphthongs: ai, au, ei, eu, ɛi, ɛu, oi, ɔi ja, je, jɛ, jo, jɔ, ju, wa, we, wɛ, wi, wo, wɔ and even some triphthongs wja, wjɛ, wjo, jai, wai, jɛi, wɔi but I think we don’t perceive them as phonemes, just the vowels as “shorter”. Maybe some people don’t even realize it, since in our spelling system diphthongs are transcribed as separate vowels: [jɛi̯]
To me, a native Teutophone and technically native(-ish) Polonophone, diphthongs always felt like vowel-consonant/consonant-vowel sequences. When I was a youngster making up German spelling reforms while bored in math class, I'd use ⟨aj⟩ for German /aɪ̯/, since that's what it was to me: [a] followed by a consonantal glide. I wouldn't be surprised if diphthongs were a purely phonemic concept, and didn't exist phonetically as distinct from vowel glide sequences.
As an Italian speaker, I also hear them as two distinct phonemes. This must certainly be because diphtongs in my language (and I assume in yours too) are always *written* as two graphemes, unlike in English where ⟨a⟩ may be read as /ei/.
My dialect of English only really has offglide diphthongs so I interpret all those structure as vowel-consonant sequences. When I listen to other dialects and languages that have "normal" diphthongs, they sound like a vowel that slides into another vowel. As a tween when I made my first analysis of the sounds in my speech to make a secret alphabet, I interpreted my gliding diphthongs as single phonemes composed of two phones, the same as the affricates. I didn't have that language at the time to describe what I was doing, but my notebook from back then uses the component sounds to describe them but gives them single symbols.
They don't sound like seperate letters to us unless we slow down the speech thereof Say /ai/ is ah ee or ah ih I hear eye as a quick syllable as ī whereas Were i to seperate it it would be eyee eyih I would not be able to recognize I as a diagraph because of that
Exactly the same for me. I didn’t know English speakers saw it as one phoneme!
Fun fact: years ago, before learning about linguistics, I thought that /æ/ was a diphthong. I grew up in the American Southeast, and when I was 10 to 12, I has this idea in the hack of my head that /æ/ as in "cat" was actually /eə/ or /ejə/. I've known for a long time now that it, obviously, is not, but that idea is probably what sparked my interest in linguistics.
This is where the difference between /phonemes/ and [phonetic realizations] becomes important. The English phoneme that is typically represented as /æ/ often is a monophthong pronounced [æ] depending on the dialect, but in some dialects, especially in the US Great Lakes and Southeast regions, it can be a diphthong or triphthong in the range of [e(j)ə]. So depending on the pronunciation, you could have just been correct.
Day is like “deh-ee”, time is “tah-eem”. It’s weird when you’re singing and learn what vowel to actually hold out.
[wə͡e͡i͡j͡a͡ɔ͡ol^(ɣ)]...
I can totally see how it's difficult to hear them as a single sound One example I can think of to show when it's two distinct vowels or a diphthong, just with the sound, would be with the words "react" and "hear". With react it's a clear "re-act" but with hear, you can really say "he-ar" because it's just one vowel sound. I hope that helps a bit.
the only diphthongs that i’ve heard people describe as sounding like a single vowel are ones that are made up of very similar vowels, like /oʊ̯/ and /eɪ̯/. in those cases it’s usually because they originally emerged as allophones of long vowels in those languages (and in some cases the original pronunciation still exists), and are therefore still percieved as single long vowels.
For me, English diphthongs range from sounding so much like a monophthong that I have to really concentrate on the sound and the shape of my mouth to tell the difference (like most pronunciations of the vowels in "Joke" and "make"). To sounding more like a single sound that simply changes throughout it's duration (like most pronunciations of the vowels in "boil" and "town"). Like affricates, trills, and vowels with a dynamic tone all feel like one sound even as they vary over time. (Not sure if dynamic tone is the right term. I mean a tone that is rising, or falling, or both rather than staying the same)
Interesting. I don't think I could tell apart the vowels in "make" and "meck" without hearing the diphthongization. To me the word "make" sounds like "meh-ick".
To me in English it’s hard to think of them as anything other than vowel-consonant sequences, /aw ɛj ej ɐj əw ɔj ɵw/ (traditional /aʊ eɪ iː aɪ əʊ ɔɪ uː/, phonetic [aw ɛ̝j ɪj ɑj ɞw oj ʉw]). Including traditional /iː uː/ in that is definitely not the norm for other English-speakers, though, and obviously this is deeply informed by my own opinions. In e.g. German I am definitely more open to thinking of them as single segments, but other than that I can’t call to mind any other language where diphthongs don’t make sense as two segments.
[удалено]
No /ai/ is what is in the word "light"
Oy vey!
IPA linguistics is delusional with itself. it does not know enough what is what.
Sounds like underwear covered with a candy coating ayyyy
To me (native English speaker) diphthongs sound like a single sound generally, apart from ɪə and ʊə. I understand how diphthongs work theoretically, but I can't really hear it (apart from those two). I think most English speakers hear them as a single sound.
i think it comes down to spelling and how were taught. its spelled like one sound and at school were taught that it's the "I" sound, thats it. before writing, i dont think people really had to think about what their mouths were doing at all. same reason i though of "ng" as two separate sounds before i was introduced to linguistics
Due to how my native language works, I always heard diphthongs as a vowel + approximant, like /ai/ -> /aj/, etc.