Re: another newbie

On Sun, 24 Nov 2002 19:14:32 -0500, David Barrow <davidab@...>
wrote:

>Jeff Jones wrote:
First of all, sorry for the delay, if it matters.

>> On Sun, 24 Nov 2002 15:47:40 -0500, David Barrow <davidab@...>
>> wrote:
(snip)

>> >Anyone else interested in modified languages? I speak English and
>> >Spanish so my interest centres mainly around these two
>>
>> There are quite a few! You'll probably be hearing from some others very
>> shortly. I mostly do languages from scratch, but have a Latin-derived
>> conlang (Rubaga) that I work on on occasion, and also speak English and
>> Spanish less badly than other natlangs, so feel free to show us.
>
>Is it on a website?
Not yet. I started doing some HTML pages some time ago but haven't gotten
very far. The language itself isn't well-developed yet; mainly phonology
and orthography with only a small amount of tentative morphosyntax. If I
uploaded what I have it'd be a mess, too. The main feature so far are some
phonological processes. I posted a little bit here a few months ago. Maybe
I'll dig up some more if you're interested.

>snip
>
>> >Looking at the SAMPA page:
>> >
>> >BrE has /e/ in pet AmE has /E/, but then the American page uses the same
>> >/e/ for raise does that mean Americans pronounce raid the same way I
>> >pronounce red? Or has someone made a mistake?
>>
>> I'm afraid someone has made a *mess*. The presentation there mostly omits
>> the []'s and //'s, so that they have to be determined from context. The
>> []'s enclose _phonetic_ notations, giving a fairly exact pronunciation,
>> while //'s enclose _phonemic_ notations, the distinctions for a given
>> language or dialect. Phonemic symbols can be pretty arbitrary, but
>> generally, the simplest symbol that *suggests* the pronunciation is used.
>> This means that phonemic symbols can't be compared across dialects.
>
> would it be best to represent e in words like pet with /E/ for both
> standard English and American and words like raise would have /eI/
> (English) and /e/ American
>
>another snip
>
>David Barrow
I'd say use /E/ for "pet" and /e/ for "raise" in both cases, as long as
we're strictly talking phonemes (and are limited to the more familiar
accents, otherwise all bets are off).

I hope this response isn't too terse!

Jeff

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