Language desk
< July 30	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	August 1 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 31

Vowel inverses

Per the way I view many of the vowels in English:

The inverse of the ee sound is the oo sound in moon.
The inverse of short i is the sound of oo in book.
The inverse of the ay sound minus the y sound is the oh sound without the w sound.
The inverse of the short e sound is the aw sound.
The ah sound (as in father) is its own inverse.

Question: what's the inverse of the sound of the a sound in cat?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:00, 31 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What is your process of producing an inverse sound? --Jayron 32 15:01, 31 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please make sure you know how the different vowel sounds differ before you can understand what I mean. Georgia guy (talk) 15:04, 31 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I know how those sounds are made. What I am trying to do to help you is to try to understand the algorithm you used to pair a sound with its inverse. The inverse of 5 is -5. The inverse of black is white. I understand those relationships implicitly, because I understand the context of how the opposite member was arrived at. What I don't know is what context, process or algorithm you used to decide that the inverse of the ee sound is the oo sound, for example. If you could explain that algorithm, perhaps I or someone else could help you find sources to determine the answer to your conundrum. Help us help you. --Jayron 32 15:16, 31 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Like, some vowels sound darker/lighter than others. Georgia guy (talk) 15:26, 31 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Are you referring to back vowels vs. front vowels? If so, those are pretty broad categories; how did you determine that a specific back (or dark) vowel is the exact inverse of a specific front (or light) vowel? --Jayron 32 17:23, 31 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Does perhaps something like a vowel diagram help you determine your answer? --Jayron 32 17:30, 31 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The vowel part of the IPA template appears to be a good source, but it says that the inverse of the ah sound is the aw sound, so there must have been a mistake in my knowledge. Georgia guy (talk) 17:39, 31 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Neither International Phonetic Alphabet nor Vowel diagram contain the word "inverse". I think it's possible that what those articles are saying and what you're inferring from them are very distinct things. Matt Deres (talk) 18:20, 31 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What I'm referring to as the inverse is in fact defined by the vowel diagram; it merely doesn't use any special name. Does what I call the inverse actually have any special name?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:29, 31 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure anyone but you quite knows what you're calling the "inverse". Maybe you could specify it more carefully? It seems to correspond roughly, but not exactly, to a right–left reflection of the chart in {{IPA vowels}}. --Trovatore (talk) 18:34, 31 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's what I mean; does it actually have a special name?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:39, 31 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not that I'm aware of. I'm open to being enlightened. --Trovatore (talk) 18:41, 31 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you call the inverse, but perhaps the STRUT-vowel is what you're after? --185.176.76.225 (talk) 15:55, 31 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It could be so that the absolute phonetic value of a sound doesn't correspond to its phonological value in a language.

In Dutch: long/short phonetic counterparts:

/eː/ — /ɪ/
/øː/ — /ʏ/

Long/short phonological counterparts:

/eː/ — /ɛ/
/i/ — /ɪ/
/y/ — /ʏ/

And in Azerbaijani, a language exhibiting vowel harmony, phonetically /œ/ and /ɯ/ are each other's rounded and unrounded counterpart respectively, but phonologically /œ/ is the rounded counterpart of /e/ while /ɯ/ is unrounded counterpart of /u/. --Theurgist (talk) 19:13, 1 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I know this is backed by a reliable source, but I have great doubts about those Azeri vowels. One must be very careful when interpreting acoustic data, because back unrounded and front rounded vowels appear on the formant chart as if they are central, when in fact they are still back and front, respectively, by their articulation.

Our hypothesis is partly supported by Ladefoged (1993). According to him, removing lip rounding from the back vowel [u] to produce [ɯ] raises formant two, so that it would also be nearer to the center of a formant chart.

So it is reasonable to suggest that Azeri /ɯ/ is, nevertheless, a back vowel, the unrounded pair of /u/, phonemically and phonetically, exactly like in Turkish.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:33, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It seems as though the OP is taking a front vowel and identifying the corresponding back vowel that shares the same vowel height. That is, until the last example. I would say, going with the first four examples, the inverse of the vowel of cat would be the vowel of father. Strut wouldn't work because it is a central vowel (at least, for most speakers). — Æµ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 18:43, 3 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]