Talk:Triphthong

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Would English [wai] (why), [wei] (way), [wau] (wow), [jei] (yay), and [wou] (woe) be considered triphthongs, or do the semivowels not count? Xyzzyva 02:59, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Phonemically, in English, no. You can show this by putting a word like 'a(n)', which varies depending on which word comes next, before it: 'a way', not 'an way'. In Italian, I believe, they have diphthongs which in English would be the a sequence of semivowel and vowel, but they're considered diphthongs because when you put a word like ‘la’ before it, they become ‘l'’ e.g. l’uo’. Phonetically, I don't know. — Felix the Cassowary 07:46, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RP examples

First, it shouldn't really say British English: I don't think those words have triphthongs in Scottish English, for example. They're Received Pronunciation.

Also, if it's generally accepted that they're disyllabic (which I don't think it is), are they really triphthongs at all? I'm going to remove "disyllabic" for now.--JHJ 19:42, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I was pretty sure they were disyllabic (as an Australian, which is generally considered essentially phonemically equivalent, I definitely make two syllables of ‘hour’), and that seeing as a phonetic definition of ‘syllable’ is somewhat difficult, a phonetic triphthong is essentially indistinct from a disyllabic sequence. —Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 23:23, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

According to the sonority hierarchy, sequences like [aʊə] are expected to be disyllabic, too. -- j. 'mach' wust | ‽ 02:36, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

If they're disyllabic, then I don't think they're triphthongs (and neither does the first paragraph of this article); they're just a sequence of diphthong and monophthong. Wells [1] says that "some people" analyse them as triphthongs, so there may be some debate about this. Also, see the brief discussion at Talk:Received_Pronunciation#Triphthongs. Personally (though I wouldn't necessarily expect an RP speaker to do the same as me) I distinguish higher and hire, and would consider the former to be two syllables and the latter to be one, but, on the other hand, hour feels like two syllables.--JHJ 17:10, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Triphthongs in Chinese language

One should mention that triphthongs are very imporatant in Standard Chinese (Mandarin):

• "uai" (as in "kuai") - written as "wai" when stand-alone
• "uei" (as in "gui") - written as "wei" when stand-alone, written as "ui" when preceded by a consonant
• "iao" (as in "liao") - written as "yao" when stand-alone
• "iou" (as in "liu") - written as "you" when stand-alone, written as "iu" when preceded by a consonant