How Uncle Angel spends his Sundays
Or, Little to show for it. Since MSN is out to lunch at the moment, I may as well post an entry here. Since it was rather cold today, accompanied by very light snow, I spent my time watching The League of Gentlemen and listening to sound files of examples of Piedmontese. I found this site (English version) just recently which has a detailed amateur description of the language. Because I found the rather eclectic Phonetical Symbology [sic!][1] to be annoying, I thought I'd see whether I could make head or tail of the symbols being used. The vocalic inventory includes shwa /ə/ (U+0259), /y/ and /ø/, as well as the usual Romance distinction between high mid and low mid vowels. Vowels are lengthened under stress, but this doesn't appear to be genuinely phonemic. The /a/ of quàder "painting" sounds longer than its unstressed counterpart, a feature which is probably only noticeable because of the use of accents marking stressed syllables in certain instances. In other wo