Short and long e in Spanish

captain obvious   Sat Feb 13, 2010 5:09 pm GMT
hearD, not "hears"
Franco   Sat Feb 13, 2010 7:06 pm GMT
<<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. >>

I'm serious. I just pronounce two consecutive vowels in the case of long vowels in English. Maybe that's not proper English but at least I avoid confusions like bitch/beach.
joolsey   Sun Feb 14, 2010 11:13 pm GMT
What about a surname such as 'Saavedra'?

Does (or did at some stage in the past) the double-vowel have any effect on the sylable to be stressed?

It almost seems to contradict Spanish rules for stress lending itself to Sávedra instead of Savédra
bid   Sun Feb 14, 2010 11:23 pm GMT
>> t 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 <<

English does have vowel length. The ee in bead is distinguished from the i in bid because with the ee in bead the tongue is higher and fronter than the "i" in bid. It is also pronounced longer most likely--but you could still hear the distinction no matter the vowel length. But there is a distinction in vowel length (and by vowel length, I'm not talking about the rubbish they teach in elementary school)--the duration of vowels like the vowel in "bid" is determined by the consonant following the vowel. When a voiced consonant follows, the vowel is pronounced for a longer length of time than when a voiceless consonant follows. Thus the "i" in bid is longer than the I in bit.
Little Tadpole   Tue Feb 16, 2010 1:33 pm GMT
bid: "What about the vowels in bid vs. bit? No "tenseness/laxness" distinction there. So does it have to do with pitch?"

As I have said earlier, English uses TENSENESS and ATR/RTR for the so-called long-short vowel-pair distinction. If you don't know what ATR/RTR are, look them up.

We are in 2010, not in 19th century. You need to update your phonetic theory and vocabulary.

To describe the short vowels in English more in detail, even though you perhaps will not understand anything I'll be saying, here it is.

English short vowels are NOT cardinal vowels. Meaning that they are not static. Just like English's long vowels like /ei/ (as in "pay"), /ou/ (as in "low"), which are actually diphthongs, English's short vowels also evolve with time. They don't have fixed spectrum characteristics with time: they change with time. English's short vowels start out with lax phonation, meaning that the opening of the glottis is much wider (forming a triangular opening if you view with fiber optics inside your throat). Because of this widened opening associated to the lax phonation, the air pressure inside your lungs will be lost very quickly. This is why the short vowels are short: if there are no other airway constrictions, short vowels cannot last beyond a fraction of a second.

In the case of Vietnamese and Khmer, lax vowels are strictly short: they cannot be made longer on their own. However, in the case of English, the lax phonation is continued with the RTR (retracted tongue root) constriction. This is how the air pressure of the lungs is maintained.

So coming back to the difference between "bit" and "bid". In the first case, colloquially, because of the lack of voicing of the "t", the only airway constriction needed is the alveolar stop, and the short vowel USUALLY does not get to the RTR stage, or barely gets to the start of this second stage. Whereas in the case of "bid", because of the voicing of "d", the vowel duration tends to be a little bit longer, making the RTR stage noticeable. I emphasize the USUALLY up there, because in Michael Jackson's song "beat IT", the "IT" becomes long enough that the RTR stage is fully noticeable, and it can be hard to distinguish it from the short vowel in "bid".

The problem with most amateur language enthusiasts and with many of the regular English teachers is that they are not aware of the time-dependent characteristics of English vowels. They think of the vowels in "bit" and "bid" as if these vowels were simple, isolatable objects. Whereas in reality these vowels are very complex animals with the muscles of your oral cavity moving, and the shape of the oral cavity changing with time.
Little Tadpole   Tue Feb 16, 2010 1:44 pm GMT
bid: "English does have vowel length."

As I have said, in NONE of the languages in the world that I have seen, vowel length makes a real differentiator.

The so-called "vowel length" in all the languages in the world are implemented through other mechanisms.

When people say "xxx language has vowel length", what they really mean to say is that they don't understand phonetics, they have no training in phonetics, they lack the correct technical terms to describe those vowel distinctions.

All this is fine in everyday's situation. You don't expect to talk to your parents using technical jargons like tenseness/laxness or ATR/RTR.

But please don't do science using kindergarten tools.
Franco   Tue Feb 16, 2010 2:08 pm GMT
How was vowel length implemented in Latin?
Gate-crasher   Tue Feb 16, 2010 3:53 pm GMT
Franco,

For all I know, Classical Latin did indeed have vowel length, which stood for stress, if I'm not mistaken. That was lost in all Romance languages, but you might wait for a more authoritative answer from Tadpole. Pedantic though he is, he gets things right.
Komtu   Thu Feb 18, 2010 3:10 am GMT
Actually, "lee" would be pronounced with the first e being pronounced as close-mid and the second as open mid. This happens because of stress and placements, but a glottal stop in between the two is common and will be accepted.
Poliglob   Thu Feb 18, 2010 12:54 pm GMT
Joolsey, I don't believe that what happens before the next-to-last syllable in 'Saavedra' would affect the stress. The ordinary place of stress for a Spanish word that ends in a vowel is on the next-to-last syllable. That would be 've' whether the word was 'Saavedra' or 'Savedra'.

A net site says that 'Saavedra' is a Galician name that comes from "saa 'hall' (from Gothic sals 'main house') + vedro 'old' (Latin vetus)". http://www.answers.com/topic/saavedra-2

Of course there are words in Spanish that are stressed farther from the end and have to carry a written accent (for example, 'lágrima' [tear]). I don't recall what in their evolution may have caused those words to be stressed that way. Perhaps it varied from word to word. 'Lágrima' comes from Latin 'lacrima', though, and there's no sign there of a double 'a' preceding the next-to-last syllable.