Talk:Close back rounded vowel

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Would anyone mind if we removed the English sample? The english /u/ is extremely advanced and deviates very much from those in other languages. As a comparison it's not terribly representative and potentially confusing, while the other examples are very close to one another. I would hate to give people the impression that [u] in other languages are all pronounced like it is in English.

At the very least it should have a proper comment.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:25, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I would mind, do not remove English from this article until you have talked to linguists such as Angr, Nohat, etc, who know how /uː/ is used in English. RP and GA insist on using /uː/ for their pronunciations and transcriptions. – AxSkov (T) 12:23, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm perfectly familiar with both usage and pronunciation in English. That why I'm asking for removal or clarification. That /u/ is used to describe the phoneme in English really not that relevant to the finer auditive aspects of the sound. This is very similar to the Swedish /ʉ/ (as in "ful" or "ut"), which in most dialects is very advance (see Swedish language#Vowels for a more precise vowel chart) and just like the English /u/ is quite different from the "neutral" position of the cardinal vowel.

But I guess making a stir about this isn't really necessary; I'll just add the comment myself.

Peter ^Isotalo 18:59, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

I understand why the transcriptions for the approximant [β̞] were added, but I'm unsure if they are really helpful to the average reader if the text says that there's no way to transcribe inrounded vowels. It doesn't seem all that necessary to get really narrow about transcribing sounds that aren't really relevant to the article at hand.

And to the anonymous editor, please stop just making stubborn reverts. There is absolutely no need for the special IPA length-sign. It makes for strange-looking text for me on my iBook, and that means others will experience it as well. A colon is fully acceptable and can't be confused with any other symbol. The actual lengthmark is only needed when having to use the half-length mark as well as the full-lrngth mark when making very narrow transcriptions and with languages that actually have over-long vowels, like Estonian (but these languages are quite rare).

Peter ^Isotalo 14:06, 1 August 2005 (UTC)