Re: Russian orthography (was: A perfect day ...)

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>
> At 12:52 31/01/00 -0500, you wrote:
<snip>
>
> >> Or maybe phonetically we still have palatalized consonnants in words like
> >> 'mien' (mine) /m'E~/ or /mjE~/? I think I pronounce more the first one,
> >but
> >> I'm pretty sure I heard the last one too.
> >
> >Yes, to my Russian ear French consonants sound palatalized before /j/, and
> >maybe slightly palatalized before /i/. Besides, French velars seem to be
> >palatalized before any front vowel and word-finally after /i/. Very
> >different from English: even the initial cluster in 'new' sounds to me
> >rather as [n]+[j], without palatalization on [n].
> >
>
>         I agree with you. I hear "new" nearly like /niju/ with a very short /i/.
> It's interesting to know how foreigners hear your native language, it helps
> you recognize some features you didn't see before. Your description seems
> to fit rather well my pronunciation, and yet before you said it I was
> unaware of that :) .

That all depends, though, on who is saying "new".  In my dialect it is
clearly pronounced /nu/.  But I do agree that it would be difficult to
distinguish palatalisation when followed by /j/.  That reminds me of the
elusive difference between French "Louis" and "lui"...

Nicole
--
nicole.eap@snet.net
http://nicole.conlang.org