o/u

[Michael Mccafferty]

Yes, this also occurs in Algonquian, where, for example, in Miami-Illinois
[o] and [u] are the same phoneme and [o:] and [u:] are the same
phoneme.

Michael

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004, Frye, David L wrote:

> Well over 100 years ago Franz Boaz wrote an article, "On Alternating Sounds," that dealt with this issue (the language he dealt with was Inuit, I think, but the principle is the same). Ears that are trained to hear the distinction between Spanish o and u, but not trained to pick out the Nahuatl o and o: sounds, will sometimes hear the Nahuatl vowel as Spanish o and sometimes as Spanish u. The distinction between the two tells us something about the listener, but not about Nahuatl.
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