Short and long e in Spanish

Franco   Thu Feb 04, 2010 12:08 am GMT
Is le-lee a valid minimal pair for short and long e distinction to exist in Spanish?
Franco   Thu Feb 04, 2010 3:24 pm GMT
bump
Franco   Fri Feb 05, 2010 9:28 pm GMT
Can anybody answer?
Gate-crasher   Fri Feb 05, 2010 11:45 pm GMT
For all I know, this is not a short/long pair, but rather a repetition of the same phoneme, with possibly a slight glottal stop in between. There's no such thing as the distinction of short/long vowels in Spanish. Or Portuguese, for that matter. Or Italian. Or Catalan. Oh, you get the point.
Franco   Sat Feb 06, 2010 12:23 am GMT
What is the difference between long e and two consecutive e's? I think that there is not glottal stop between both e.
Gate-crasher   Tue Feb 09, 2010 11:31 pm GMT
<< What is the difference between long e and two consecutive e's? >>

If you know German, it's the difference between "Mann" and "man". Or "feel" and "fill" in English, though that is debatable. It's not just repeating the same vowel twice, you know.
Madre mia   Wed Feb 10, 2010 12:47 am GMT
In Spanish there is just one E and it sounds the same all the time, the same goes for the other 4 vowels.
Franco   Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:33 am GMT
It's not just repeating the same vowel twice, you know.

Isn't e repeated twice in feel?
feati   Wed Feb 10, 2010 5:09 pm GMT
>>Gate-crasher Tue Feb 09, 2010 11:31 pm GMT
>If you know German, it's the difference between "Mann" and "man"

"Mann" and "man" both have a short a. "Bann" and "Bahn" differ in vowel length.
Little Tadpole   Thu Feb 11, 2010 4:07 pm GMT
Vowel duration is useless differentiator in phonetics.

Many languages have "long-short" vowel distinction. But if you look at the details of their implementation, none of them actually relies on vowel duration. In Vietnamese and Khmer, long-short vowel distinction is actually based on vowel tenseness. In English, it's based on a combination of tenseness and ATR/RTR (advanced tongue root, retracted tongue root). In Japanese and Finnish, it's based on tonal contour. In German, it's based on secondary constriction (ATR/RTR for back vowels, dorso-palatal constriction for front vowels.)

They have done an experiment with Japanese speakers. When they removed the tonal contour inflexions, the Japanese speakers often get confused about the "length" of the words: even if the vowels are made longer, they cannot be sure about whether it is a long vowel or a short vowel, and they fail to pinpoint the meaning of the words. (There are many minimum-pair words in Japanese that are differentiated only by vowel "length".)

Similarly, if you listen to Michael Jackson's "Beat-It" song, you will quickly realize that the "long-vowel" in "Beat" occupies one single beat, whereas the "short-vowel" in "It" occupies three beats. That is, the short vowel is three times longer than the long vowel!!

So, vowel duration is a useless differentiator in phonetics.

-----

Spanish "lee" surely has a glottal constriction between the two vowels. Perhaps not a full glottal stop in colloquial speech, but a partial glottal constriction for sure.
miguél   Sat Feb 13, 2010 12:22 am GMT
"le" = /le/
"lee" = /lee/, not /le:/. Each /e/ has its own pitch, it's really a repetition rather than a long vowel.
miguél   Sat Feb 13, 2010 12:23 am GMT
/le:/ would be understood as "le" with an emphasis, not as "lee"
bid   Sat Feb 13, 2010 1:11 am GMT
What about the vowels in bid vs. bit? No "tenseness/laxness" distinction there. So does it have to do with pitch?
Gate-crasher   Sat Feb 13, 2010 2:45 am GMT
Said Franco:

<< Isn't e repeated twice in feel? >>

Either you're kidding, or you seriously need to get your English pronunciation checked. And, no, of course I wasn't talking about the spelling.
captain obvious   Sat Feb 13, 2010 5:07 pm GMT
<<What about the vowels in bid vs. bit? No "tenseness/laxness" distinction there. So does it have to do with pitch? >>

it has to do with the ending of the word, obviously. The "d" is pronounced as a "d", and the "t" is either pronounced as a "t", or semi-pronounced (as in, the tongue gets in a "t" position but no "t" sound is ever actually hears. - there's a word for that)