another newbie

Hi all

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

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 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

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