Suggest IPA Symbols for these vowel sounds

[MDbaloch]

I am now satisfied with  [o:] . but in my instincts this sound is a monophthong . after i searched more i noted that this sound is centralized  version of [u:] or it may be [ʊ:](lax).
what do you suggest me after listening all of my sounds of this vowel quality?


agree ! "[i:~ɪ:] " can it be the centralized version of [i:] ? or its okay with [ ɪ:] ?
what is your final suggestion ?

So maybe the system involves [i:], [u:], [e:], [o:] and [ɨ:][ʉ:]?

It's hard to me to say because those sounds are unfamiliar for my ears, but I'd imagine you could actually tell by feeling where your tongue is when they're produced.

Note that the same time lax vowels like ɪ and ʊ are actually somewhat centralized: lax means that the sound is not as strongly articulated, that the tongue is not held as extremely, not as far from the center. So a lax vowel is slightly more central and slightly more mid than a tense vowel. In other words, there could be a blurry line between ɪ~ɨ and ʊ~ʉ. Since you are not making claims about tenseness or laxness and the length is constant, I'd say maybe the central analysis is a good idea. But make sure it seems reasonable based on how you actually physically articulate the sounds!

Hi,
after all i used Praat spectogram and got F1 and F2 formant for these two confusing vowels i tried many words and the average was as i draw a red dot for each vowel.  you can see these dots in formant plot picture .
now, what is your suggestion ? 
Thank you

[MDbaloch]

Looking at some online material, the documented vowels of Belochi seem to be as follows:

/i u a iː uː aː/
/eː oː ẽː õː/
/ai au/

Which on first glance seems quite close to the PIE/PII vowel inventory.

Proto-Indo-European
monophthong — *e *o *ē *ō
diphthong — *eH *oH *ēH *ōH (where H represents the semivowels i̯ u̯)

Proto-Indo-Iranian
monophthong — *i *u *a *ī *ū *ā
diphthong — *aH *āH (where H represents the semivowels i̯ u̯)

Belochi
monophthong¹ — i u a ī ū ā
monophthong² — ē ō ḗ ṓ (where ḗ ṓ represent nasal variants of ē ō)
diphthong — ai au

The short vowels also tend to be more centralised than their long counterparts. The nasal vowels are said to occur only in some dialects.

I couldn't find any material showing the preservation of the PII long diphthongs. The PIE *e *o *ē *ō merged into PII *a *ā, and PIE *i̯ *u̯ became PII *i *u. The PII long counterparts *ī *ū probably come from PIE diphthongs *ei *eu (or possibly *ēi *ēu). The PIE laryngeals merged into a single /H/ (not to be confused with the H from above) of unknown quality (though often assumed to have been a glottal stop), though it might have a hand in forming some of the PII and later Beloichi vowels, I'm not sure.

Does this seem reasonable? Does this explain what you intuit?

Don't take this as absolute truth, I'm an not an expert on PIE or PII, but this is what I gather from online material, and it seems reasonable.

At least it might point you in the right direction.

i don't think so, these are not nasal vowels in any case .
there are three qualities for

• and [e] as long vowels. that is why i got confused ! . but as you can see now i draw two dots in formant plant picture , referring  these 2 vowel sound in a place suggested by Praat.

now, what is your opinion ?
thank you so much for your detailed reply !

[Daniel]

Regarding the vowel chart: Interesting. I don't know.

I don't think those are central vowels because:
1) There is a substantial distance from the center.
2) They're in very different places from each other, not both at the same "center" location.


Remember that exact locations are not the same from language to language. The best guess based on that vowel chart would be that these are [ɪ] and [ʊ], which just happen to be slightly more centralized than in English. But it's still odd to call them "lax" when they appear long and otherwise not "lax".

--

This is very good information, but it is still somewhat limited. Articulatory information would be very helpful.

Please do your best to answer the following questions for each vowel:

1. Look in a mirror. Are your lips rounded like "o" or unrounded like "e"?
Is it possible that these are a rounded front vowel and an unrounded back vowel? Just based on the location in the vowel chart, that might be possible. They didn't sound like that to me, though.

2. Where do you believe your tongue is?
Specifically, compare the unknown back vowel to [u] and the unknown front vowel to [i]: is it the same height? the same tenseness? the same backness?
Although it requires some technical knowledge, this is relatively easy to do and you should be able to at least approximate whether it feels like a different place of articulation.




Additionally, although it would be a lot of work for you (but valuable for your research and also possibly for the broader community of linguists), it would be great to see a full vowel chart-- remove/ignore the English vowels and plot all of the Balochi vowels on a chart. The locations may simply differ from English (so it's not a good idea to compare English [i] to an uknown Balochi vowel!), but the final distribution could be very helpful in determining what the system is, I think.




--
Edit: also, as in freknu's posts, I'm concerned about the fact that your data is completely different from what appears in existing descriptions. I know nothing about Balochi, so I am assuming that your data is correct. But there should be some reason why your data differs-- either you're describing a different dialect (entirely possible), or you or the existing analyses are wrong. It would be worthwhile to check on that.

[freknu]

i don't think so, these are not nasal vowels in any case.

I didn't say they were nasal vowels, I merely presented an overview of what has been documented for the Belochi language. The nasal vowels occur only in some dialects, not all.

The overview could help you look in the right direction.

E.g. do you have the diphthongs /ai/ and /au/?