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Which vowels should we use?

I say that we use the Finnish vowels, myself. /a { e i o u 2 y/ sounds perfect to me. Feel free to add on so we can get a decent poll up.

Nasalization will be in another thread.

Just a question, is { and 2 the same as ä and ö respectively?

I don't understand... what in God's name does all that mean? confused

So........

Vowel - "sound" as in "example word" (Vowel's IPA Name)

a - "ah" as in English "father" (Open Front/Back Unrounded)
ä - "ae" as in English "hat" (Near-Open Front Unrounded)
e - "eh" as in English "set" (Mid Front Unrounded)
i - "ee" as in English "machine" (Close Front Unrounded)
o - "oh" as in German "Kohl" (Mid Back Rounded)
ö - "oe" as in German "schön" (Mid Front Rounded)
u - "oo" as in English "food"(Close Back Rounded)
ü - "ouh" as in English "hook" (Close Front Rounded OR Near-Close Near-Back)

amirite?

I really don't understand all the /a ( e $ #@! 1 2 3 o/ junk. eek
I know it's X-SAMPA, but it all seems so counter-intuitive to me, especially when we can use Unicode here on Gaia.

Which brings me to a point I wanted to make... We must make sure we can write this stuff intelligibly here on Gaia without having to resort to Unicode "alt-codes" or crazy abbreviations like X-SAMPA symbols. It would be best if we can give each vowel it's own letter, or at least an intelligible two-letter variation for typing.

If we use the Letter J for the Y Sound as Eccentric Iconoclast recommended in the consonant thread, then we can use the letter Y for some vowel. And if we leave the W Sound up to the diphthongs, that frees up the letter W. We can use X or Q for the remaining vowel.

Thus my recommendation:
a = a
ä = q
e = e
i = i
o = o
ö = w
u = u
ü = y

Eh? Eh? mrgreen

I'm happy with the Finnish vowels as long as things don't get too complicated.

EDIT: Also, on second thought and upon further inspection, vowel harmony doesn't sound like too good of an idea. Granted it will simplify things a bit when making words, but I dunno. The Finnish words I've seen as examples have intimidatingly difficult or unexpected pronunciations (to me)...

All the more reason to adopt an easy single character vowel system! I just use Quick Key (link). Also, nice link XD.

Ah, well I don't know anything about how Macs handle Unicode input and display. And yes, Quick Key is only for Windows.

I wouldn't know how to implement 3 different vowel lengths intelligibly... eek

But on the other hand, it probably wouldn't hurt to give it a try. It's either vowel length distinction or vowel harmony... one or the other (or neither!).

Would they have to be completely different vowels, or just used differently?

I actually like vowel harmony a lot, but that would ultimately end up being an issue when we're working on phonotactics rather than phonology.

Vowel length is a lot easier to distinguish.