r/linguisticshumor

A1: Just a little bit of everything, maybe one or two words per sentence. No full sentences! I suck, but I’m happy.

A2: If it’s in simple, <10 word sentences, I’m almost fluent! I don’t suck!

B1: I understand everything based on vibes, and can come up with a passable response. I might suck?

B2: I understand normal conversations, but speak incorrectly. Technically fluent, in the sense of flowing, but damn I suck.

C1: I can understand everything, speak correctly a lot of the time, but still sound unnatural. Damn, I suck.

C2: ???? (Please tell me your experiences)

So goose and tune both have [uː ~ uw], but tune, as well as many (most? all?) other long-u words, originate from Norman French through Middle English /yː/ which evolved into [juː]. They merged into words that used to have [ɪw] and [ew] like new and threw. Later the [juː] was affected by yod-dropping and yod-coalescence in different dialects, so you get [nuw ~ njuː] and [tuːn ~ tjuːn ~ t͡ʃuːn] which only merges with goose/toon words under yod-dropping, since toon is also [tuːn].

My question is why is the [j] in the TUNE set (and I guess in CURE as well if you split it from a hypothetical TOUR set) is considered part of the onset consonant cluster and not a rising diphthong in the nucleus. Is the reason etymological, phonological, something else? It's odd to me that long U represents a two-phoneme sequence when other diphthongs like /o͡ʊ/ and /a͡ɪ/ are treated as a single vowel phoneme?

E: just realised I posted this to the humour sub, meh. Hopefully you guys can still help but feel free to jerk instead