Re: Leute (was...)

On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 11:37:53 -0000, Christian Thalmann <cinga@...>
wrote:

>--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@Y...> wrote:
>
>> I'm sorry, I should have mentioned it: It's the Swiss German dialect
>> convention for the sound of [i] as opposed to <i> that represents
>> [I]. The same convention applies to many Swiss geographical and other
>> names, as the canton of Schwyz, or the Mythen mountains. That use of <y>
>> isn't made by all, especially among the younger writers.
>
>And especially by writers whose dialect doesn't distinguish
>the two.  I personally only have one /i/ phoneme in my
>lect.
Of course! Typical ignorance by conditioning of my own dialect.

>In Bärndütsch, the distinction is clearly phonemic: |si|
>"they" vs |sy| "to be".  The vowels |i e ä a| are all very
>low [I E a A], so there is plenty of room left in the high
>front area for another phoneme.
I note you're using [a, A] rather than the more common [&, a]. Why is that?

>In my Züritüütsch, the same conceptual space is filled by
>adding another "ä" phoneme rather than another "i".  I
>clearly distinguish "ë" /E/ from "ä" /a/ and "e" /e/,
>though I still haven't been able to make out a minimal
>pair for this distinction.  The spelling of /E/ varies
>greatly; many people write it as "ä" too, or sometimes as
>"e".  The "official" spelling rules for Züritüütsch suggest
>"è", but they also use "ì ò ù" etc for lowered versions of
>those vowels, which I don't have in my lect.
I bet that in a perceptory test, Züritüütsch /e, 2, o/ would turn out to be
practically the same as Bärndütsch /I, Y, U/ (again that 2-Y merger:).

>I recently noticed that I have a /9/ phoneme.  /br2:tl@/
>"to bake bread" and /br9:tl@/ "to roast" are a minimal pair
>between /2/ and /9/.  I came to the conclusion that [9]
>must be an allophone of /E/, since it's derived from
>umlauted Germanic /a/, but to my chargin found a minimal
>pair for those too: /krE:t/ "device" vs /kr9:t/ "fish
>bones".
I've heard that Züritüütsch /9/ is a relict of the change from /a/ to /O/,
which has disappeard (but in the Zürcher highlands). Originally, only the
southern Swiss German dialects had retained old /a/, whereas all northern
Swiss German dialects changed it to /O/ (or even /o/). Nowadays,
Züritüütsch has undone this innovation. The former presence of /O/ can be
detected by umlaut pairs such as /Stra:s: - Str9:s:li/, while southern
Swiss German dialects have /Stra:s: - Str&:s:li/, and northern Swiss German
dialects (except Züritüütsch) /StrO:s: - Str9:s:li/.

>'Mach', how do you write /9/ in Swiss German?
Well, with the rounded front vowels, it's the same as with the unrounded
front vowels which you've described (and with the rounded back vowels,
too): The 'same conceptual space' is filled in Bärndütsch by a
discrimination in the higher vowels: /y, Y, 9/, not /y, 2, 9/. The one
thing I'm not sure about is whether Bärndütsch /9/ would rather be [2_o] or
even [2] instead of [9] or [9_r].

I prefer the more traditional Swiss German orthography as proposed by
Werner Marti to the more phonemic approach of Eugen Dieth, so I write /y,
Y, 9/ as <ü, ü, ö>, and eventually mark the first with a dot below (only
for linguistic purposes). The Dieth orthography, which is more common for
Züritüütsch than Marti, suggests <ü, ö, ö> for /y, 2, 9/ and eventually
marks the latter with an additional grave accent above. I think there's
no 'codification' of the more traditional orthography for Züritüütsch.

> Right now, I
>use "ë", since [E] instead of [9] sounds less wrong to me
>than [2] instead of [9].  I recently considered switching
>to "æ" for /E/ and "œ" for /9/, but I'm not happy with the
>resulting typographical look, especially when doubled (and
>I do have phonemic vowel length in my lect).
Does Züritüütsch have phonemic vowel length in all vowels (Bärndütsch has)?

>> So it'd be "['Sv\it:srdytS] not [Sv\i:tsrdy:tS]".
>
>"Schwitzerdütsch"?  Eh bisch Yugo oder was?  ;-)  Though I
>guess at the current levels of temperature and humidity we
>can safely be called "Schwitzer".
_Schwytzer_ and _Schwitzer_ is a Bärndütsch minimal pair for short /i/ vs.
short /I/!

g_0ry@_^s:
j. 'mach' wust

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