NAME

Rankin, Robert L. rankin at KU.EDU
Tue Aug 14 16:44:42 UTC 2012


> Bob  and all the other historical folks-  Remember that there’s no phonemic nasal O in Jiwere,  so how do those Dhegiha phonemes Mark was pointing out translate into IOM?  Would it be an oral O, or a nasal U?

The nasal rounded vowel is sometimes pronounced [oN] and sometimes [uN] in Dakota.  But there's never any contrast between the two.  Omaha merged aN and uN, so even that distinction isn't made in OM.  In their practical orthography they write the merged nasal vowel as "oN", and it's pronounced like  nasal open O, sort of like the vowel in "haunt".

> And now,  to muddy things up more,  let me add that there are a lot of times where there is a vowel phonetically closer to a nasal schwa to my ear,  but those are usually an underlying An.  But Hamilton and Irvin did occasionally write a nasal O, if I’m remembering things correctly.

I think probably all Siouan languages have a nasal schwa.  As far as I know it is always just a variant of nasal short /aN/.  The corresponding long vowel should be [a] with nasality.
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