Talk:Vowel reduction

Schwa

"The most common example is the schwa sound, present in nearly all languages."

Uh… what? If this is taken from the Schwa article, note that the definition there includes epenthetic vowels; there are many, many languages without centralized-reduced vowels AIUI (most monosyllabic and Polynesian langs, for just two examples.) --Tropylium 13:03, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Slovene

In the same way, Slovene [...] has a stressed reduced vowel: /e/ appears as schwa [ə] in some reducing environments (such as /er/ when no other vowel is adjacent), even when the syllable is stressed.

That doesn't make sense. A reduced vowel is by definition unstressed. If the Slovene phoneme /e/ appears as [ə] in certain environments in stressed syllables, that's a simple case of allophony, or neutralisation of a contrast /e/ vs. /ə/ in certain environments, both phonemes merging in /ə/. Anyway, Slovene doesn't even have any kind of synchronic vowel reduction, so this example is off topic.

Of course, stressed schwas (or other central vowels), which can even be phonemic, such as in Albanian, Romanian or Bulgarian, may historically derive from reduced vowels that received the stress after their reduction, but they aren't synchronically reduced vowels anymore. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:31, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

The situation with Slovene is actually even more different. Slovene schwa isn't a reduced vowel synchronically, it is a separate phoneme that contrasts with other vowels in the same position. It originates as an epenthetic vowel that was inserted after the loss of other reduced vowels (due to Havlík's law in the Slavic languages). What makes Slovene special is that the epenthetic vowel remains as a schwa, while in the other Slavic languages it usually became some other less neutral vowel (in Serbo-Croatian it became /a/, for example). CodeCat (talk) 02:23, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

'Schwi'

Any possibility of a good source for this term? I'm seeing a smattering of online usages, but none of them look usable. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 17:14, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

I think we had a discussion about this term some years ago. I argued that it is not used in serious academic writing about English phonology (but I suspect it may be gaining some ground nowadays). The author who first used it (whose name I have forgotten for the moment) told me it was used in a joking manner, and was paired with another element "schwu". RoachPeter (talk) 18:20, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I saw a reference to that one too. And as it happens, googling for it, I believe I've just also hit the discussion you mention: Talk:Stress and vowel reduction in English#Please not "schwi" again. I'm sympathetic to the inclusion, as I learned something, have a weakness for bad puns, and can see the terminological niche it fills, but it would good to source it, even if the best available is on the marginal side. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 00:41, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

See also more discussion at Talk:Stress and vowel reduction in English#Schwu RoachPeter (talk) 07:45, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! As there's a journal article (at least of a sort) referred to there, I'm very content with that. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 14:23, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Not an effective article

This article may be correct, but it's written in such a way that the only people who could understand it are people who already know what "vowel reduction" is. cool-RR (talk) 17:27, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Incorrect languages

This article is linked to other languages, but the destination explain a related but utterly different concept. Neutralization is not the same as vowel reduction (and is explained in detail in the Phoneme article). User:Nargosiprenk (talk) 18:11, 17 May 2021 (GMT-3)

The closest match in German Wikipedia appears to be de:Zentralisierung (Vokal) – which is, however, linked to Relative articulation, and corresponding articles in other languages, also a dubious equivalent. However, this can only be fixed on Wikidata. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:27, 6 July 2024 (UTC)