What I was trying to say is that in spanish vowels are said only by one "letter" for example, speaking in spanish, the letter "a" it's said only "a" but in english it's "ei" (pronounced in spanish), those are two letters, or the letter "i" in spanish it's just that "i" but in english it's "ai" so that's the thing, in spanish and finnish vowels are pronounced the same
By only one "letter".
Ah yes, sorry. I misunderstood. So far, all the languages I've seen are this way, with maybe the only exception being german. But then, the vowels are still the same, but sometimes consonants are pronounced different. Like s, depending on whether or not it's at the beginning of a word or not. Or g if it's at the end or not.
Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. When I said there was no phonemic difference, I meant that these languages don't make a distinction between these sounds as far as meaning is concerned. That's not the case in english, for example - can't think of any examples right now but I know they exist. The point is that if you mispronounce the 'o', you'll sound accented, but hardly 'wrong'.
The sound of o-as-in-love doesn't exist in either, so, I couldn't say a thing about it. It could be mixed up with ö in finnish, perhaps, but again, that would sound heavily accented.
About the sound of 'pero', it's not that there is less lip-rounding - they're both close-mid back rounded vowels. It's just that it's usually diphtongized, with a semi-vowel following it - the short version of the u as in 'put'.
As far as examples between two different words that if you mispronounce the o as in "thought" or "hole" they would be wrong- I can think of two off the top of my head.
Haul and hole
far and for
The same does apply in spanish and finnish, doesn't it? Like (in spanish) simply changing an a to an o at the end of the word would change the gender, correct? I don't know about finnish, but I would assume that if a foreigner mispronounced a word with a y for a u sound, that could change the word. Is that also correct?
Again, sorry for misunderstanding before.
English can be way more confusing with how each vowel depends so much on where it is in the word and what's around it and sometimes just the word itself without knowing otherwise.
Haha, balogna and colonel...
That's what makes english such an interesting language, though. XP
Now, in regards to kaurahiutale... I'm under the impression that it would be pronounced: cowww-rah-hee-ooh-tah-lay
With the kau part held out longer because there are two letters but pronounced as one sound. Correct? And the i and u in hiutale are pronounced seperate from eachother, right?
Thanks guys, this is so fucking intense.=D
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