Talk:Semivowel

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[edit] Confused

I'm confused by one of the examples... how exactly is 'w' a vowel acting as a consonant? Patrick Corcoran 16:12, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

We English-speakers aren't used to thinking of W as a vowel, but if you listen to how it's pronounced (or pay close attention to the position of your lips and tongue as you do so), you'll find that it's identical to the "oo" in "boot". So it's a vowel sound, even if it's not what we normally consider a vowel letter. In the example that confused you, the English word "well" would sound the same if it were spelled "uell" or "ooell".
Things must be considered in the opposite manner: the fact that spellings "uell" or "ooell" might be also pronounced as /w/ doesn’t mean that /w/ is a vowel as in boot. The graphical form has nothing to do with phonetics, so let it aside and you’ll find that /w/ is a consonant, and /u(:)/ a vowel. Flofl.
What I find confusing in this article is this sentence: "They are typically briefer, less stable and often closer than the corresponding vowels." I don't understand what the word "closer" means in this context. --Pat Berry 13:23, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
In phonetics, vowels are described with various terms: front, back; rounded, unrounded; open, close. I've always been a bit confused by them myself, but I believe "closer" in this sense means that the mouth is more closed. — Hippietrail 12:50, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'm confused by what the sentence means by "less stable", but I guess that's why this article is a stub.
Phoneticians don’t. Consonants are unstable sounds as they are slightly influenced by preceding and following sounds: they perform a sort of transition between the other sounds (generally vowels, for example the /b/ in boot is already more rounded than the one in bee, but also other consonants) whereas vowels are more stable. The term semivowel refers to a grapheme-related concept and should not be used in phonetics, and hopefully neither in phonemics. Flofl. 08:47, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

"Even though both the [w] and the [ʊ̯] are similar to the vowel [u], the transcription [waʊ̯] indicates that the initial segment is considered to be a consonant by the transcriber, while the final segment is considered to form a diphthong with the preceding vowel." -- Shouldn't there be a note of some sort about phonemic vs. phonetic considerations? Also, this sentence seems a little disingenuous, since there are other differences between [w] and [ʊ̯], besides one being considered a consonant by the transcriber and one not. The illustration would be clearer if we used the transcription [wau̯], since the relation between [w] and [u̯] is closer. (Or does no one actually ever pronounce [wau̯]?) 24.159.255.29 00:21, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Correspondence?

Does anybody happen to know which vowels correspond to which semi-vowels? I know that /i/ corresponds to /j/, but I always thought that /w/ corresponded to /u/. This article seems to imply that it corresponds to /ʊ/. That doesn't sound right at all to me. /uɛl/ sounds much more like 'well' than /ʊɛl/ (/ʊ/ being the same vowel as the American pronunciation for 'book'). I think that /ɥ/ corresponds to /y/ but I'm not too sure. I'm completely lost with the rest of them. The vowels are the only part that I have trouble understanding when it comes to phonetics. The rest is completely straight-forward and easy to understand just by reading the description for articulation. The vowels, however, are irritatingly vague and seem to contradict each other in their description and sound samples.--67.177.36.200 02:11, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Okay, after a while of personal Expirementation with the consonants and vowels (the few vowels I can actually pronounce) I've come up with this: /ɰ/ corresponds to /ɨ/ (Russian 'ы'), I think. /ʋ/ corresponds to /œ/ (I don't even know if I can pronounce this correctly, but I think it might be correct since it's the closest in it's proximity to /ʋ/ without sounding like a rounded 'i'). And after some consideration I'm definitely convinced that /w/ does correspond to /u/. I'm pretty sure that these expert linguists must have some damn good reasons to use 'ʊ' as part of the diphthong cluster in the English 'O', but my non-English-centered brain is telling me that they have some kind of intellectual disabilities. Somebody tell me why wrong, please! Until then, 'wow' is /wæu/ for me!

And another thing, in ever American dialect I've ever heard, the vowel in 'wow' and 'how' is exactly the same as 'at'. I don't think I've ever heard an American even pronounce the same /a/ that is used in Spanish, Russian, Italian, French, German, Greek, et cetera. This is why I used 'æ' in that example. Somebody please help me clear up these contradictions! By the way, I speak Russian and English, so I have an extra view to linguistics that many monolingual people might not have.--67.177.36.200 02:43, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

I would say that in California it's NOT pronounced like that. More like /wau/ and not at all like 'at'! -Iopq 04:13, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
The correspondances are now in the article. [ʋ] is not a semivowel and doesn't correspond to any vowel.
As for why we get [ʊ] in [waʊ], well, a vowel is defined by its formants (bands of sound energy at certain frequencies). Usually vowels are mapped on charts according to the 1st vs. the 2nd formants. The chart in the vowel article is an idealized schematic of this. (No real language is so perfectly symmetrical.) A "pure" vowel is a dot on such a chart. However, a diphthong moves - it starts off at one place and shifts. The English diphthong ow starts off (at least in many dialects) near IPA [a], and ends up near [ʊ]. It never quite makes it all the way up to [u]. You can even automate this: take a recording, and have a computer analyse it and trace it out on the chart.
(Actually, ow ends up further back than [ʊ], which is maybe why that vowel doesn't sound right to you. But it doesn't get as high as [u], so that's not right either. To be more precise, you'd need to use diacritics, which most people just don't bother with.)
As for the [a] part, it isn't quite the [æ] of at, but neither is it the [ɑ] of ah. It's inbetween, which is written [a] in the IPA.
And no, you wouldn't write well as [ʊɛl], because the first sound is a consonant. The first and last sounds of wow are different. If you take a recording of wow and play it backwards, it won't sound quite right. kwami 08:04, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Diphthong transcription

In this article it says "Using the transcription [aʊ̯] for the diphthong rather than [æu̯] as one might expect is a minor phonetic point. See diphthong for details.", but I can't find anything really explaining this in the diphthong article. Could someone write an explanation in that article. I would myself, but I don't actually know why diphthongs are transcribed that way. Thanks. --Redtitan 01:57, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that little disclaimer is arbitrary and potentially a little confusing. There have to exist loads of possible ways to pronounce (and transcribe) /au/, and it's silly to single out the specific pronunciations [aʊ̯] and [æu̯]. Also note that the two cited phonetic forms do not even have the same semivowel in them! 24.159.255.29 00:13, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I'm removing that remark from the article. FilipeS 20:10, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge Non-syllabic vowel into this article?

Should Non-syllabic vowel be merged into this article? They seem to be equivalent concepts. FilipeS 17:55, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't know how I edited both articles in the past without merging them. I can't think why we'd want to keep them separate. kwami (talk) 07:10, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Merged. See what you think. Some of this, such as transcription, might actually be better under diphthong. kwami (talk) 08:04, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Glides, out of favor?

The introduction says '...also known as glides, though that term has fallen out of favor'. I'm too amateur to have a say on the matter, but I still do encounter 'glide' quite often (in recent literature). Though, my focus is on semitic languages.-- hɑkeem¡ʇuɐɹɯǝǝʞɐɥ 07:18, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

You're right. I think that's too POV to stand as a general statement, though there are certainly phonologists who disprefer the term. kwami (talk) 07:52, 30 April 2008 (UTC)