Re: another newbie

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

>Hi all
Welcome to the list.

>I'm another newbie. My interest veers more towards modifying languages
>languages rather than constructing them from scratch. I call them what
>if... languages in the sense of what would happen or have happened if
>certain changes to the languages happen in the future,or had or hadn't
>happened in the past, for example an English that hadn't lost most of
>its inflexions  and had kept grammatical gender or an English without
>Norse, Norman, French, Latin influence, but instead had kept the
>original Anglo-Saxon vocabulary but had still undergone the sound
>changes modern English went through (such as gws) Or inflected languages
>such as Spanish, French, German with their inflexions reduced to a level
>like that of English or even further
>
>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.

>Re pronunciation of claw clawed clod
>
>clawed and clod are homophones in some dialects not in others, they
>definitely are not in mine
>
>In my southern England dialect (influenced by living many years in Peru)
>
>clod = /klQd/  looking at the sampa page at
>http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/home.htm the only other language I
>can see with this Q symbol is Danish: kors,  though I suppose it's
>similar to the /o/ of Spanish toro or French gros (examples from the
>SAMPA page) but shorter and more open
>
>claw = /klO:/
>clawed = /klO:/
>
>I pronounce au or aw closer to /Q/ than /O:/ in words like Austria,
>Australia
>
>My understanding of American English is:
>
>clod = /klAd/ similar to a in French pâte? or Danish pakken?
>
>claw is /klA/ or /klO/ (French comme?) depending on dialect
>clawed is /klAd/ or /klOd/ depending on dialect
>
>I have never heard claw pronounced as a diphthong, though I think there
>are people who pronounce the final w which may make it seem like a
>diphthong. Perhaps some native English speaker on the list can tell us
>whether he or she does diphthongise claw
>
>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.

>I'm compiling a comparison table using the examples from the SAMPA site;
>maybe someone could post it on their website. This is what I have so
>far:
>
>/a/ Cro sat Dan malle Fre patte Ger satz  It rata Pol pat Por falo Rom
>cap Slo c^as Spa valle Swe hall
>/a:/ Dut naam Ger tat Hun láb Slo mama
>/A/ AmE hot Dan pakken Dut pat Est Karu Fre pâte Nor hatt
>/A:/ BrE stars Dan parken Nor hat
>/{/ BrE, AmE pat Est Käru Nor vært Swe Herr
>/{:/ Dan male Swe Här
>/{{/ Est Kääru
>/V/ BrE, AmE cut
>
>slashes or square brackets? can someone explain correct usage, and
>apologies if I used them incorrectly
>
>
>David Barrow
Jeff Jones (filling in for Christophe and Jan, who are apparently napping)

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