3 ms·

> True, but to my ear at least, /eɪ/ is further from /ɛi/ than /aɪ/ is. If I may ask purely out of curiosity, are you a native English speaker? I only say this

> True, but to my ear at least, /eɪ/ is further from /ɛi/ than /aɪ/ is. If I may ask purely out of curiosity, are you a native English speaker? I only say this because, to my American English ear, [eɪ] and [ɛi] are virtually indistinguishable. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding what you're trying to say....

samatman 2y ago
I think you're wrong about that, sorry. As in, you're not getting the right sound out of the string /ɛi/ when you read it off. I encourage you to listen to a native Dutch speaker pronounce Mynheer Dijkstra's name, which you can do on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra Does that sound more like "dike" or more like "day"? To me (yes, native American English speaker, of one of the dialects very close to 'Standard'), it is obviously more like the former.
- BalinKing 2y ago
  Sorry if I sounded argumentative by the way, that was not my intent at all—it was an entirely honest question, and I'm really bad at wording things (especially via text).... I do agree that the WP recording of "Dijkstra" sounds more like "dike" than "day". I might've figured out the disconnect. According to this image on Wikipedia[0], the Northern Standard Dutch realization of [ɛi] starts lower than the monophthongal [ɛ] in the same dialect[1]. Just speculation on my part, but maybe in the context of Dutch linguistics, [ɛi] conventionally signifies a wider diphthong than I would've naïvely thought? (If so, I guess this makes me a cautionary tale against directly comparing IPA transcriptions between languages....) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_phonology#/media/File:Dutch_diphthong_chart.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_phonology#/media/File:Du... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_phonology#/media/File:Dutch_monophthongs_chart.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_phonology#/media/File:Du...

samatman 2y ago

I think you're wrong about that, sorry. As in, you're not getting the right sound out of the string /ɛi/ when you read it off. I encourage you to listen to a native Dutch speaker pronounce Mynheer Dijkstra's name, which you can do on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra Does that sound more like "dike" or more like "day"? To me (yes, native American English speaker, of one of the dialects very close to 'Standard'), it is obviously more like the former.

BalinKing 2y ago
Sorry if I sounded argumentative by the way, that was not my intent at all—it was an entirely honest question, and I'm really bad at wording things (especially via text).... I do agree that the WP recording of "Dijkstra" sounds more like "dike" than "day". I might've figured out the disconnect. According to this image on Wikipedia[0], the Northern Standard Dutch realization of [ɛi] starts lower than the monophthongal [ɛ] in the same dialect[1]. Just speculation on my part, but maybe in the context of Dutch linguistics, [ɛi] conventionally signifies a wider diphthong than I would've naïvely thought? (If so, I guess this makes me a cautionary tale against directly comparing IPA transcriptions between languages....) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_phonology#/media/File:Dutch_diphthong_chart.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_phonology#/media/File:Du... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_phonology#/media/File:Dutch_monophthongs_chart.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_phonology#/media/File:Du...