User:40bus/Pronunciations/Finnish 2


 * The original short front vowels $⟨ä⟩$, $⟨e⟩$, $⟨ö⟩$, $⟨i⟩$ and $⟨y⟩$ underwent a vowel shift similar to that found in New Zealand English, though not as extreme:
 * The $⟨ä⟩$ vowel varies from  to  in General and Cultivated SAE. However, the new prestige value in younger Helsinki speakers of the General variety  seems to be open front, the same as in Modern RP. Before , the fully open  is the norm in the General variety, whereas before voiced stops as well as bilabial and alveolar nasals the vowel tends to be centralised and lengthened to , often with slight diphthongisation . Broad  can be as close as mid , encroaching on the Cultivated realisation of $⟨e⟩$.
 * $⟨e⟩$ and $⟨ö⟩$  are close-mid,  or higher ,   in General, often with centralisation  and  (it is unclear whether the last allophone is distinct from the front allophones of $⟨i⟩$ and $⟨y⟩$ in the General variety). Variants above the close-mid height are typical of female speech. General  and  are similar enough to  and  in RP and similar accents as to cause perceptual problems for outsiders. Broad variants are very similar to the General ones, but in Cultivated the vowels can be as open as  and  (within the RP norm). In General and Broad, the vowels can be lowered to  and  or even  and  when they occur before.
 * As indicated in the transcription, the vowel  has a schwa-like quality even in stressed positions, except when in contact with velars and palatals, after  as well as in the word-initial position, where the conservative  quality (further fronted to  in Broad) is retained. Due to weak vowel merger, neither Lenin and Lennon nor except and accept are distinct in SAE: . The quality of the merged vowel is typically  ( in some Broad varieties), even in unstressed closed syllables. This means that all three vowels of limited  are phonetically the same: . These variants are covered by the symbol ⟨ɨ⟩ (without the lowering diacritic) in phonetic transcription. In the word-final position, the vowel is mid  in all varieties, with some lowering to  or even  being possible in the Cultivated variety. These allophones are written with ⟨ə⟩ in phonetic transcription, and the same symbol is used for word-initial and postvocalic instances of word-internal  (, etc.). As far as the phonemic analysis is concerned, the stressed central  has been variously analysed as an allophone of, an allophone of  (making it a stressable vowel), an allophone of a merged / vowel (which is the analysis adopted in this article) or a phoneme of its own that is separate from both  and the front variety of.
 * In the Cultivated variety, Lenin and except  on the one hand and Lennon  and accept  on the other may be distinct, as in RP. In addition, stressed instances of  are consistently front  (as in RP), without any centralisation, whereas the schwa is consistently mid, so that the unstressed vowels of Lenin and Lennon contrast not only by backness but also by height: . The  quality occurs also in happy  and immediately  (cf. General ). For this reason, this variety is analysed as containing an extra  phoneme.
 * The vowel  is a long close front monophthong, either close to cardinal  or slightly mid-centralised. It does not have a tendency to diphthongise, which distinguishes SAE from Australian and New Zealand English.
 * The vowel  is typically a weakly rounded retracted central vowel, somewhat more central than the traditional RP value. Younger speakers of the General variety (especially females) often use a fully central . This vowel is effectively the rounded counterpart of . Backer and sometimes more rounded variants  occur before . Broad SAE can feature a more rounded vowel, but that is more common in Afrikaans English.
 * The vowel  is usually central  or somewhat fronter in White varieties, though in the Cultivated variety, it is closer to  (typically not fully back, thus ), which is also the normal realisation before  in other varieties. Younger (particularly female) speakers of the General variety use an even more front vowel, so that food  may be distinguished from feed  only by rounding. The vowel is often a monophthong, but there is some tendency to diphthongise it before sonorants (as in wounded  and school ).
 * In the General variety,,   and   are commonly monophthongized to ,  (phonetically between  and a monophthongal ) and . Among those, the monophthongal variant of  is the most common. The last monophthong contrasts with the close-mid , which stands for . The monophthonging of  can cause intelligibility problems for outsiders; Roger Lass says that he himself once misunderstood the phrase the total onslaught  for the turtle onslaught . On the other hand,  does not monophthongize. In addition,  is almost monophthongal , resulting in a near-merger of  with , which is normally a close-mid monophthong.