proiznoshenie -e-

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Frank Y. Gladney wrote:

> Schwa is central, neither back nor front.  But in some languages one 
> observes a narrow/open distinction among schwas, as in Eng. 
> _roses_ (narrow) vs. _Rosa's_ (open).

True enough (though in English it's mostly allophonic), but that's not 
what I had in mind. To answer Katarina's first question:

Back vowels in Russian (твёрдые гласные) include /u/, /o/, and the 
historical "back yer" (ancestor of the hard sign).

Central vowels in Russian include /y/.

Front vowels in Russian (мягкие гласные) include /i/, /e/, and the 
historical "front yer" (ancestor of the soft sign)

/A/ is generally classed as a back vowel, but it's not as far back as 
the others because of the mechanics of vowel production in the human 
mouth. Here's a rough graph, where "*" represents schwa, a mid central 
vowel:

back...central...front
   u       y       i   high
                       ||
     o    *     e      mid
                       ||
        a              low

By "-ish" in "backish" and "frontish" I meant "-ovatyy."

Turkish classes its vowels into "thick" (/u/, /y/, /o/, /a/) and "thin" 
(/ü/, /ö/, /i/, /e/) for purposes of vowel harmony; this is essentially 
back vs. front. (I've used "y" here for the dotless "i" for 
compatibility with the Slavic mindset and to avoid any font issues.) 
Some Central Asian relatives such as Azeri and Qazaq have retained an 
/ä/ similar to the vowel in English "bat," which classes with the front 
vowels, but Turkish has merged it with /e/. See 
<http://www.lingvisto.org/tur/harmonio1.html>, point 1 (in Russian).

Similarly, Finnish classes /u/, /o/, /a/ as back and /ü/, /ö/, /i/, /e/ 
(spelled "y," "ö," "i," "e") as front, but it's hard to explain the 
exceptions here (some instances of /i/, /e/ count as neutral).

Katarina Peitlova wrote:
 > Some of  signs (- znaki -) in your message are illegible.

I will be happy to clarify if you will do the same. Which characters 
were problematic? Outlook Express (your program) is generally 
Unicode-friendly, so they all should've been fine.

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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