8 ms·

Yes, with a small correction - "uit" is loosely pronounced as "out". A huis is pronounced like a house. Well, close enough anyway :)

by Ligrev 7y ago

lucb1e 7y ago
The english "out" is pronounced like the dutch "oud". Would you say "oud" and "uit" are the same? An afslouddijk sounds different from an afsluitdijk. The english "oid" (as in humanoid) I think is closer to our "uit" sound than "out" would be.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  Disclaimer: don't speak Dutch; no training in Dutch; going solely off of wikipedia. Wikipedia tells us that Dutch "ui" is the diphthong /œy/ and "ou" is the diphthong /ɑu/. The English MOUTH vowel is conventionally /aʊ/ in American pronunciation, and the CHOICE vowel is conventionally /ɔɪ/. I will analyze them as if they were /au/ and /ɔi/. It's clear that the MOUTH vowel is the best available English match for Dutch "ou". The difference between [a] and [ɑ] is minimal. Dutch "ui" is trickier. /œy/ starts with a front vowel, which isn't true of /au/ or /ɔi/. /ɔ/ is a better match in terms of vowel height. (According to the notation. This is a case where you're probably better off just listening to samples; vowel notation is quite sloppy.) /y/ is the high front rounded vowel, a sound which, like /œ/ (mid-low front rounded), does not exist in English. It has two obvious approximants: FLEECE (/i/), the high front unrounded vowel, and GOOSE (/u/), the high back rounded vowel. If you choose FLEECE, prioritizing the vowel's frontness, you'll end up thinking that "ui" should correspond to the English CHOICE vowel -- the first part of the diphthong has been moved back, and the second part has been unrounded, but compromises have to be made. If you pick GOOSE, then you'll end up on the MOUTH vowel -- in this case, the first part gets moved back and lowered somewhat, and the second part also gets moved back but preserves its lip rounding. Is either of those choices objectively right? No. You might prefer thinking of "ui" as CHOICE on the grounds that that makes it different from "ou", but that runs into the problem that (according to wikipedia again) Dutch also includes an "oi" diphthong which is a close match to English CHOICE. You could think of the root of the problem as being that Dutch has three high vowels /i/, /y/, /u/ (spelled "ie", "uu", "oe" among other ways, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_orthography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_orthography ), where English has only /i/ and /u/. You're going to end up with collisions somewhere.
  - lucb1e 7y ago
    I must admit that this is a little beyond me and I don't really understand what you're trying to say. Do I understand correctly that you're saying the vowel in choice is the best match for the Dutch "ui" when going off of the IPA notation, but that there exists no good match in English like there is for "ou"?
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      I'm saying that (1) there is no perfect or near-perfect match; (2) it isn't clear which available option is the "best" match, because the three obvious options each sacrifice something different. If you're interested in the theory: Vowels are generally thought of as being points in a three-dimensional space. The dimensions are: 1. Whether the vowel is high or low -- if your mouth opens wide (chin closer to feet), it's a lower vowel; if your mouth doesn't open far (chin closer to eyes), it's a higher vowel. 2. Whether the vowel is front or back. The traditional way to explain this to linguistics students is to give them all lollipops. You put the lollipop on the middle of your tongue with the stick jutting out of your mouth. You can observe that the stick juts farther forward when you're pronouncing the FLEECE vowel than it does when you're pronouncing the GOOSE vowel. 3. Whether, as you pronounce the vowel, your lips are rounded or not. Dutch "ui" is a diphthong, a transition from one vowel to another vowel. It appears to be a transition from (lowish, front, rounded) to (high, front, rounded). This is difficult for English because, in English, all front vowels are unrounded. If you'd like to preserve the lip-rounding aspect of "ui", you need to use back vowels, at which point the MOUTH vowel is a near-perfect (low, back, xx[1]) -> (high, back, rounded) match. If you'd like to preserve the frontness of "ui", the English FACE vowel is available, which is a transition from (lowish, front, unrounded) to (high, front, unrounded). CHOICE is a different option; it's (lowish, back, rounded) -> (high, front, unrounded). With CHOICE, you're choosing to match the rounding (and not the frontness) of the beginning of "ui", but transition into an end that matches frontness instead of rounding. Which part of a sound is more important for purposes of matching a foreign sound to a native sound is a very interesting question, and to the best of my knowledge nobody has any idea why different languages make the choices they do. My (American) ears think the MOUTH vowel is the best match for Dutch "ui", even though it's an even better match for Dutch "ou". But someone else might disagree. For an example of "differential splitting", consider that in modern English, W, V, and F are three separate sounds. In Old English, W and F were "real" sounds ("phonemes"), and V was a variety ("allophone") of F. In modern Mandarin Chinese, W and F are also phonemes, and V is an allophone of... W. Clearly, if you speak modern Mandarin, what's important about the V sound is not the same thing that would be important if you spoke Old English. [1] Rounding is less obvious for low vowels -- a certain amount of lip rounding is induced by opening your mouth so far.
- hollander 7y ago
  Certainly not the same. https://nl.forvo.com/word/ui/ https://nl.forvo.com/word/ui/
  - lucb1e 7y ago
    That's my point ;) I think ui sounds more like the English oi than like the English/Dutch ou. I'm not sure there exists a word in English that contains the ui sound as we know it.

Yes, with a small correction - "uit" is loosely pronounced as "out". A huis is pronounced like a house. Well, close enough anyway :)

by Ligrev 7y ago

Yes, with a small correction - "uit" is loosely pronounced as "out". A huis is pronounced like a house. Well, close enough anyway :)

lucb1e 7y ago

The english "out" is pronounced like the dutch "oud". Would you say "oud" and "uit" are the same? An afslouddijk sounds different from an afsluitdijk. The english "oid" (as in humanoid) I think is closer to our "uit" sound than "out" would be.

thaumasiotes 7y ago
Disclaimer: don't speak Dutch; no training in Dutch; going solely off of wikipedia. Wikipedia tells us that Dutch "ui" is the diphthong /œy/ and "ou" is the diphthong /ɑu/. The English MOUTH vowel is conventionally /aʊ/ in American pronunciation, and the CHOICE vowel is conventionally /ɔɪ/. I will analyze them as if they were /au/ and /ɔi/. It's clear that the MOUTH vowel is the best available English match for Dutch "ou". The difference between [a] and [ɑ] is minimal. Dutch "ui" is trickier. /œy/ starts with a front vowel, which isn't true of /au/ or /ɔi/. /ɔ/ is a better match in terms of vowel height. (According to the notation. This is a case where you're probably better off just listening to samples; vowel notation is quite sloppy.) /y/ is the high front rounded vowel, a sound which, like /œ/ (mid-low front rounded), does not exist in English. It has two obvious approximants: FLEECE (/i/), the high front unrounded vowel, and GOOSE (/u/), the high back rounded vowel. If you choose FLEECE, prioritizing the vowel's frontness, you'll end up thinking that "ui" should correspond to the English CHOICE vowel -- the first part of the diphthong has been moved back, and the second part has been unrounded, but compromises have to be made. If you pick GOOSE, then you'll end up on the MOUTH vowel -- in this case, the first part gets moved back and lowered somewhat, and the second part also gets moved back but preserves its lip rounding. Is either of those choices objectively right? No. You might prefer thinking of "ui" as CHOICE on the grounds that that makes it different from "ou", but that runs into the problem that (according to wikipedia again) Dutch also includes an "oi" diphthong which is a close match to English CHOICE. You could think of the root of the problem as being that Dutch has three high vowels /i/, /y/, /u/ (spelled "ie", "uu", "oe" among other ways, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_orthography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_orthography ), where English has only /i/ and /u/. You're going to end up with collisions somewhere.
- lucb1e 7y ago
  I must admit that this is a little beyond me and I don't really understand what you're trying to say. Do I understand correctly that you're saying the vowel in choice is the best match for the Dutch "ui" when going off of the IPA notation, but that there exists no good match in English like there is for "ou"?
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    I'm saying that (1) there is no perfect or near-perfect match; (2) it isn't clear which available option is the "best" match, because the three obvious options each sacrifice something different. If you're interested in the theory: Vowels are generally thought of as being points in a three-dimensional space. The dimensions are: 1. Whether the vowel is high or low -- if your mouth opens wide (chin closer to feet), it's a lower vowel; if your mouth doesn't open far (chin closer to eyes), it's a higher vowel. 2. Whether the vowel is front or back. The traditional way to explain this to linguistics students is to give them all lollipops. You put the lollipop on the middle of your tongue with the stick jutting out of your mouth. You can observe that the stick juts farther forward when you're pronouncing the FLEECE vowel than it does when you're pronouncing the GOOSE vowel. 3. Whether, as you pronounce the vowel, your lips are rounded or not. Dutch "ui" is a diphthong, a transition from one vowel to another vowel. It appears to be a transition from (lowish, front, rounded) to (high, front, rounded). This is difficult for English because, in English, all front vowels are unrounded. If you'd like to preserve the lip-rounding aspect of "ui", you need to use back vowels, at which point the MOUTH vowel is a near-perfect (low, back, xx[1]) -> (high, back, rounded) match. If you'd like to preserve the frontness of "ui", the English FACE vowel is available, which is a transition from (lowish, front, unrounded) to (high, front, unrounded). CHOICE is a different option; it's (lowish, back, rounded) -> (high, front, unrounded). With CHOICE, you're choosing to match the rounding (and not the frontness) of the beginning of "ui", but transition into an end that matches frontness instead of rounding. Which part of a sound is more important for purposes of matching a foreign sound to a native sound is a very interesting question, and to the best of my knowledge nobody has any idea why different languages make the choices they do. My (American) ears think the MOUTH vowel is the best match for Dutch "ui", even though it's an even better match for Dutch "ou". But someone else might disagree. For an example of "differential splitting", consider that in modern English, W, V, and F are three separate sounds. In Old English, W and F were "real" sounds ("phonemes"), and V was a variety ("allophone") of F. In modern Mandarin Chinese, W and F are also phonemes, and V is an allophone of... W. Clearly, if you speak modern Mandarin, what's important about the V sound is not the same thing that would be important if you spoke Old English. [1] Rounding is less obvious for low vowels -- a certain amount of lip rounding is induced by opening your mouth so far.
hollander 7y ago
Certainly not the same. https://nl.forvo.com/word/ui/ https://nl.forvo.com/word/ui/
- lucb1e 7y ago
  That's my point ;) I think ui sounds more like the English oi than like the English/Dutch ou. I'm not sure there exists a word in English that contains the ui sound as we know it.