Talk:Close back rounded vowel

Would anyone mind if we removed the English sample? The english /u/ is extremely advanced and deviates very much from those in other languages. As a comparison it's not terribly representative and potentially confusing, while the other examples are very close to one another. I would hate to give people the impression that [u] in other languages are all pronounced like it is in English.

At the very least it should have a proper comment.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:25, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I would mind, do not remove English from this article until you have talked to linguists such as Angr, Nohat, etc, who know how /uː/ is used in English. RP and GA insist on using /uː/ for their pronunciations and transcriptions. – AxSkov (T) 12:23, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm perfectly familiar with both usage and pronunciation in English. That why I'm asking for removal or clarification. That /u/ is used to describe the phoneme in English really not that relevant to the finer auditive aspects of the sound. This is very similar to the Swedish /ʉ/ (as in "ful" or "ut"), which in most dialects is very advance (see Swedish language#Vowels for a more precise vowel chart) and just like the English /u/ is quite different from the "neutral" position of the cardinal vowel.

But I guess making a stir about this isn't really necessary; I'll just add the comment myself.

Peter ^Isotalo 18:59, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

I understand why the transcriptions for the approximant [β̞] were added, but I'm unsure if they are really helpful to the average reader if the text says that there's no way to transcribe inrounded vowels. It doesn't seem all that necessary to get really narrow about transcribing sounds that aren't really relevant to the article at hand.

And to the anonymous editor, please stop just making stubborn reverts. There is absolutely no need for the special IPA length-sign. It makes for strange-looking text for me on my iBook, and that means others will experience it as well. A colon is fully acceptable and can't be confused with any other symbol. The actual lengthmark is only needed when having to use the half-length mark as well as the full-lrngth mark when making very narrow transcriptions and with languages that actually have over-long vowels, like Estonian (but these languages are quite rare).

Peter ^Isotalo 14:06, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Norwegian

Is the Norwegian /u/ compressed like the Swedish? kwami (talk) 13:03, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is. - Some random Swede living in Norway —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.112.68.78 (talk) 22:14, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Usage in Japanese

I've always been rather confounded by the use of [u] to represent う, and even more so when I see i used alongside the Swedish example "oro". To my ears at least, the don't sound the least bit similiar, if you listen to the sound files provided on the page, then I'm pretty sure you'll find that the Japanese U and its Swedish counterpart won't sound the least bit alike.

First time I heard Japanese and tried to pronouce names such as "Mutsumi" och "Kyushu", I found that what I pronounced ([u]) didn't sound at all like what the Japanese themselves used to say in animae, which sounded a lot more like [y]. I found it had a lot more similarities to a Hungarian and German Ü (representing [y]) than it had to a Hungarian U or a Swedish O, which represent the vowel [u].

I can't come up with any facts or sources to prove or back up my claim, but I'd still like someone to look into it, preferably somebody who speaks more that just English and Japanese. Nederbörd (talk) 16:51, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

No-where do we say it's the same vowel as Hungarian /u/. I can't speak for Swedish. It's a diphthong though, unlike Japanese. Listening to the sound file, it also sounds quite a bit lower--almost like an English /ou/. You're right, it doesn't sound much like Japanese. But "u" is as good as you're going to get for Japanese using the IPA, unless they introduce more vowel letters. Japanese /u/ is further forward than cardinal, in addition to being compressed. I'd think it's the Swedish we'd need to change. However, it may just be that our speaker doesn't have the accent transcribed in the IPA. kwami (talk) 00:35, 24 August 2009 (UTC)