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A centering diphthong is one that begins with a more peripheral vowel and ends with a more central one, such as [ɪə̯], [ɛə̯], and [ʊə̯] in Received Pronunciation or [iə̯] and [uə̯] in Irish. Many centering diphthongs are also opening diphthongs ([iə̯], [uə̯]). Diphthongs may contrast in how far they open or close.
In Old English, two forms of harmonic vowel breaking occurred: breaking and retraction and back mutation.. In prehistoric Old English, breaking and retraction changed stressed short and long front vowels i, e, æ to short and long diphthongs spelled io, eo, ea when followed by h or by r, l + another consonant (short vowels only), and sometimes w (only for certain short vowels): [3]
The vowels of FLEECE and GOOSE are commonly pronounced as narrow diphthongs, approaching [ɪi] and [ʊu], in RP. Near-RP speakers may have particularly marked diphthongization of the type [əi] and [əu ~ əʉ], respectively. In General American, the pronunciation varies between a monophthong and a diphthong. [43]
The falling diphthong /ɪw/ of due and dew changed to a rising diphthong, which became the sequence [juː]. The change did not occur in all dialects, however; see Yod-dropping. The diphthongs /əɪ/ and /əʊ/ of tide and house widened to /aɪ/ and /aʊ/, respectively. The diphthong /ʊɪ/ merged into /əɪ/ ~ /aɪ/.
The vein–vain merger is the merger of the Middle English diphthongs /ei/ and /ai/ that occurs in all dialects of present English. The following mergers are grouped together by Wells as the long mid mergers. They occur in all but a few dialects of English. The pane–pain merger is a merger of the long mid monophthong /eː/ and the diphthong ...
Diphthongs are typically specified with a non-syllabic diacritic, as in ui̯ or u̯i , or with a superscript for the on- or off-glide, as in uⁱ or ᵘi . Sometimes a tie bar is used: u͜i , especially when it is difficult to tell if the diphthong is characterized by an on-glide or an off-glide or when it is variable. Notes
ui sometimes represented the diphthong /ui̯/, as in cui listen ⓘ and huic. [27] The diphthong ei mostly had changed to ī by the classical epoch; ei remained only in a few words such as the interjection hei. If there is a tréma above the second vowel, both vowels are pronounced separately: aë [ä.ɛ], aü [a.ʊ], eü [e.ʊ] and oë [ɔ.ɛ].
A short diphthong had the same length as a short single vowel, and a long diphthong had the same length as a long single vowel. [125] As with monophthongs, their length was not systematically marked in Old English manuscripts, but is inferred from other evidence, such as a word's etymological origins or the pronunciation of its descendants.