English and diphthongization

One of my friends in Germany told me that the English language sounds like a string of vowels due to the fact that, in essence, almost all (all that I can think of) vowels in English end up pronounced as diphthongs (not to mention vowel-like consonants like "r\" and "l" as well as the semivowels /w/ and /j/).

Anyway, my question is: this "diphthongization" of English vowels, is it the result of Old English speakers adopting some of the pronunciation of the Celts (Irish and Scots Gaelic seem to exhibit a high degree of diphthongization) or is it the result of Old French pronunciation (beau originally had three vowels, apparently, etc.)?

What do ya'll think? Where does English (outside of Scotland at least) get this diphthongization?

Looking at some writing in Gaelic, you'd get the impression that it has a lot more diphthongs than there actually are in the language. In reality, only *some* of the vowels you see are pronounced as vowels, others are there to influence the pronunciation of an adjoining consonant. Furthermore, I'd say scottish English has less diphthongisation than most forms. So that's probably not a factor.

So would it be more of a result of the GVS than anything else?

<<One of my friends in Germany told me that the English language sounds like a string of vowels due to the fact that, in essence, almost all (all that I can think of) vowels in English end up pronounced as diphthongs (not to mention vowel-like consonants like "r\" and "l" as well as the semivowels /w/ and /j/).>>

That's not true though. English has several vowel monophthongal phonemes: /æ/ /ɛ/ /ɪ/ /ɒ/ /ʊ/ /ʌ/ /ɑː/ /ɔː/. The ones that are usually or often diphthongal are: /e:/ /i:/ /o:/ /u:/ /aɪ/ /oɪ/ /aʊ/, as well as the r-influenced phonemes which are realized as centering diphthongs in non-rhotic dialects and, arguably, as rhotic centering dihpthongs in rhotic dialects.

<<Anyway, my question is: this "diphthongization" of English vowels, is it the result of Old English speakers adopting some of the pronunciation of the Celts (Irish and Scots Gaelic seem to exhibit a high degree of diphthongization) or is it the result of Old French pronunciation (beau originally had three vowels, apparently, etc.)?>>

This diphthongization arose after the Great Vowel Shift, so I think any direct influence from other languages (especially the Celtic ones) is unlikely. You can read about the shift here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_vowel_shift .

Sorry, that should read <several monophthongal phonemes>.

My guess is that the dipthongization of English arose from the large number of minimal pairs due to the heavy amount of borrowing.

Middle English made a distinction between long and short-a which probably became more and more cumbersome as the language expanded. So long-a became /{:/ which crowded out /E:/, pushing it upward to /e:/ which then pushed the existing /e:/ words up to /i:/ at which point long-i words had nowhere to go, and added an onglide (/Ii/, which soon became /@i/) and Modern English was born.

The point is that there are so many minimal pairs in English, that we end up which a natural progression toward dipthongization so that we don't get confused. The unholy Romantic-Germanic marriage that produced modern English is mostly the culprit, I would suspect.

As for the the theory with Celtic languages, I'm not sure. Nearby languages almost always have a whole lot of phonetic similarity (e.g. English and the Celtic languages, Finnish and the Scandanavian languages, Spanish and Basque, Sinhala and Tamil), even if they aren't related.

>>That's not true though. English has several vowel monophthongal phonemes: /æ/ /ɛ/ /ɪ/ /ɒ/ /ʊ/ /ʌ/ /ɑː/ /ɔː/. The ones that are usually or often diphthongal are: /e:/ /i:/ /o:/ /u:/ /aɪ/ /oɪ/ /aʊ/, as well as the r-influenced phonemes which are realized as centering diphthongs in non-rhotic dialects and, arguably, as rhotic centering dihpthongs in rhotic dialects.<<

It should be noted that such really is not unique to English at all as Germanic languages go. For instance, what are commonly described as /e:/ and /o:/ are actually realized as diphthongs much of the time in Low Saxon and to a lesser extent in Dutch, and other Germanic languages have similar things, such as Icelandic and Faroese having turned many historical long vowels into diphthongs and many other North Germanic dialects actually often having narrow diphthongs for long vowels.

>>Finnish and the Scandanavian languages<<

Ahem... the only thing that they really have common in all phonologically is that they both have rounded front vowels and they have phonemic vowel length... Seriously...

<<My guess is that the dipthongization of English arose from the large number of minimal pairs due to the heavy amount of borrowing.
...
The point is that there are so many minimal pairs in English, that we end up which a natural progression toward dipthongization so that we don't get confused. The unholy Romantic-Germanic marriage that produced modern English is mostly the culprit, I would suspect.
>>

Um, No.

For starters, the heavy amount of borrowing happened piecemeal, over centuries, not all at once.

Your reasoning, though well-thought, is totally absurd, being based on pure conjecture rather than real facts.

You are indeed dangerous!

Tis true - and the best evidence of such is Middle English, which in many ways is far more Germanic-seeming than Modern English is, despite existing much of the time it was spoken in the shadow of Norman French and Latin...