Open /o/ and closed /e/ - what are these allophones?


Some speakers, mainly middle-aged and older males, sometimes pronounce ねえ as
[ne:], i.e. with a more closed variant of the usual /e/-sound, let's call it
[ɛ]. There are also speakers for the same approximate group who sometimes
pronounce そう as [sɔ:], i.e. with a more open variant of the usual /o/ sound,
let's call it [o], usually when going そうそうそうそう.

Usually this just strikes me as slightly amusing, and it seems to have the
same effect on other speakers of my approximate age group (early thirties).

However, on further thought, this is actually interesting. Some of these
speakers otherwise speak standard Japanese and don't use (as far as I can
tell) these vowel variants in other words.

So my questions are:

  * Do these vowel variants appear in other words that I am missing?
  * What is the history of these vowel variants (if any)? Are they by any chance remnants from historical phonemic mergers, or are they just one-off phenomena?




You have such a good ear, don't you?

According to my personal observation, in this case it's not that like free or
conditional variants, but rather loose (lax) pronunciation of interjections.
And I suspect what you heard are not **more open** but **more mid-
centralized** (there may be generation gaps, but I'm not sure...).

While the regular //e// and //o// in Japanese are the (true-)mid vowels,
people tend to utter ねえねえねえねえ closer to
[[[ɘ]]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-mid_central_unrounded_vowel) or
[[[ɜ]]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mid_central_unrounded_vowel), and
そうそうそうそう or おいおいおいおい, [[[ɞ]]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-
mid_central_rounded_vowel) (for //o//). Emphasized ねーえ may indeed become
closer to [[ɛ]] as you said (or even to [[æ]]), but this usually gives
flirting impression. A very impassioned そう as in そうなんだよ！ would rather go more
closed but more tense (more like true [[o]]), that may strike you "more open"
or "deeper".

Compared with them, え？ is more likely to be pronounced like [[ɛ]], but it
generally sounds rude. I remember a friend of mine is always saying え～？ (very
reluctantly) as [[ɛ̃ː]].

I also remembered expressions of joy such as やったー or わーい are usually fronted
being [a] instead of usual [ɐ].

