Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 June 11

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June 11

Diphthong question

Do French and Swedish have any diphthongs? Is aï in French maïs diphthong or hiatus and are oi in French in voix and oj in Swedish pojke diphtongs or semivowels? --40bus (talk) 16:31, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, the traditional analysis of Standard Swedish is that it doesn't have diphtongs, and /Vj/ combinations always contain a semivowel. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:45, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

By the way, French 'oi' is generally pronounced as [wɑ], not [ɔɪ], it seems as you might not have been clear about it. (So yes, it's a semivowel.) 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:23, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

I have been aware of this for a while, and my question about that is: can the [wɑ] be transcribed as [u̯ɑ]? --40bus (talk) 17:24, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Wiktionary gives two pronunciations for maïs, one from Paris as /ma.is/, two syllables with a hiatus, and a variant from Toulouse as /majs/, a single syllable with a vowel followed by a semivowel. This combination also occurs in the standard pronunciation of French canaille (/ka.naj/), rail (/ʁaj/), travail (/tʁa.vaj/), and many other words. It is generally not considered a diphthong, and neither is /ɛj/ in abeille (/a.bɛj/), /ij/ in coquille (/kɔ.kij/) or /uj/ in ratatouille (/ʁa.ta.tuj/). When followed by a vowel, the vowel and semivowel happily part ways, taking up residence in separate syllables: railler (/ʁa.je/), rayon (/ʁɛ.jɔ̃/), papillon (/pa.pi.jɔ̃/), bouillon (/bu.jɔ̃/).  --Lambiam 20:24, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Any sequence of a vowel and a semivowel (in either order) in the same syllable is a diphthong. Whether such a sequence is considered one phoneme or two depends on language (and analysis—it's even possible to analyze English as having no phonemic diphthongs). Nardog (talk) 00:53, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Note, though, that – as reported on the French Wikipedia in the section Diphtongue § Existence des diphtongues en français moderne – there are other points of view.  --Lambiam 07:36, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

That section is all about whether French has phonemic diphthongs, and it says, just as I said, it can be analyzed that it does or that it doesn't. [je, ɥi, wa] are, from a cross-linguistic, phonetic point of view, unequivocally diphthongs, in that they stand in contrast to [i.e, y.i, u.a]. Whether that means it is reasonable to posit /je, ɥi, wa/ as distinct phonemes in French is a totally different matter. Nardog (talk) 08:15, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

It is a matter of which definition one prefers. To some authors only phonemic diphthongs are diphthongs; accidental juxtapositions do not qualify.^[1][2][3] Arguments for either choice can be given; neither is inherently superior.  --Lambiam 19:29, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

The extra dot in maïs, naïf, haïr signifies hiatus. —Tamfang (talk) 16:26, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Which does not keep a Toulousian from pronouncing the ⟨aï⟩ in maïs as a vowel followed without hiatus by a semivowel.  --Lambiam 06:35, 13 June 2023 (UTC)