Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1964, Qupperneq 100

108
Toward the phonetic description of Faroese vowels
Fig. 2 shows the short vowels and a number of long
vowels spoken by a young male Faroese (speaking a rather
“neutral” dialect with no marked deviations in these vowels
from the norm generally referred to in textbooks on Faroese
pronunciation). The vowel symbols are those of the IPA
system. The short vowels are indicated by dots. These re»
present, from the left to the right, in the highest range
(about 400 cps.) the vowels in the words hitta, húski,
hugga, in the next range (500—600 cps.) the vowels in
hetta, høgga,!) hátta, and in the lowest range (about 650 cps.)
the vowel in hatta. The long vowels are indicated by arrows
pointing in the direction of the glide (the point of the
arrow indicates a measurement made as close to the end of
the vowel as possible without entering into the transition
to the following consonant). The two highest vowels were
spoken in the words hita, hurðar, the two medial ones in
eta, høka, hopa (“recede”), and at bottom the diphthongs
[ea, oa] in hata, áta are included because they complete the
system of long vowels in relation to the short ones. The
dotted arrows represent long vowels spoken in isolation
(as in reciting the alphabet). All items have been compared
with a repetition of the record to ensure that the formant
values are fairly typical.
The long vowels [e:, ø:, o:] spoken by this person ex*
hibit an increment of Fl, i. e. a lowering of the tongue,
which is almost comparable to that of [ea, oa].* 2) The vowels
[e:, o:] do not directly point toward a central articulation
of [3]®type; to judge from the acoustic picture the glide is
essentially a matter of tongue*height (cp. Naert’s notation
of the former as [ee]). The diphthongs [ea, oa], however,
point toward a common point, which roughly coincides
with short [a].
The close vowels [i:, u:] tend to glide in the opposite
!) The symbol [æ] should be added to the dot just above [a] in Fig. 2.
2) [ø:[ of heka seems to be slightly anomalous, but it may be that
this vowel is on the whole not quite comparable to [e:, o:].