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Comment by jihadjihad | Hacker News Reader

In French class I was taught that /y/ can be made simply by doing /i/ while the lips are fully rounded.

Right, that's the canonical way to produce the vowel.

But what the video explains is the fact that the rounding is actually less fundamental than the length of the resonating tract. It means that you can keep your lips unrounded and produce a vowel very, very similar to the canonical /y/

Edit: I made a typo in my original comment, I meant to say "by centralizing /i/ slightly" (not "/u/")

This is why it's pretty hard to distinguish [y] from [ʉ] and [ɨ] from [ɯ]. Indeed, as I understand, in many cases the distinction is strictly phonemic, not phonetic.

> Indeed, as I understand, in many cases the distinction is strictly phonemic, not phonetic.

What is this supposed to mean? It isn't possible to maintain a phonemic distinction between sounds that aren't phonetically distinct.

I’m guessing they got it backwards accidentally: I’d say the distinction between [y ʉ] is strictly phonetic, not phonemic.

What I meant is that whether a given language is analyzed as having /y/ or /ʉ/ is often down to phonemics - i.e. how that vowel groups with others - and not to the minute distinctions in how it is actually pronounced (especially once you take allophones and regional pronunciations into account).

FWIW I'm even not sure there are any languages that actually have a phonemic distinction between /y/ and /ʉ/ or between /ɨ/ and /ɯ/. I'm sure there are some, but I would be very surprised if the actual distinction cannot be more sensibly analyzed in other terms (length etc).

Norwegian has /ʏ, yː, ʉ, ʉː, ʊ, uː/. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_phonology

Very interesting, thank you. I knew that vowel inventory in Germanic languages can get very impressive, but that formant chart is quite something:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_phonology#/media/Fil...

In the phonetic realization section, though, there's this:

"The close /ʏ, yː, ʉ, ʉː/ have been variously described as protruded [ʏʷ, yʷː] and compressed [ʉ͍, ʉ͍ː] as well as compressed [ʏ͍, y͍ː] and protruded [ʉʷ, ʉʷː]. The backness of /ʉ, ʉː/ has also been variously described as central [ʉ, ʉː] and near-front [ʉ̟, ʉ̟ː]. Therefore, /ʏ, yː/ may be differentiated from /ʉ, ʉː/ by backness and the type of rounding or even only by the type of rounding"

This last bit is actually even more surprising: two front-ish rounded vowels that are distinguished solely by how the lips are rounded? I can't help but wonder how stable such an arrangement could be long term.

I have also found this about Swedish

> Rounded vowels have two types of rounding: /ɵ/, /ʉː/, /ʊ/ and /uː/ are compressed [...] > /ʏ/, /yː/, /œ/ and its pre-/r/ allophone [œ̞], /øː/ and its pre-/r/ allophone [œ̞ː], /ɔ/ and /oː/ are protruded [...] > Type of rounding is the primary way of distinguishing /ʉː, ɵ/ from /yː, œ/, especially in Central Standard Swedish.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_phonology

More about different kinds of rounding at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundedness

/y/ is the rounded version /i/, so that makes sense

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