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

At 12:52 31/01/00 -0500, you wrote:
>
>V yuzhyi kray [vjúZnyj kraj] 'to (a/the) southern land'
>vs.
>V'yuzhnyi kray [v'júZnyj kraj] '(a/the) land of snowstorms'.
>
        Can you make a little transliteration of those two phrases? It's rather
interesting.

        I have to learn Russian! I've always been impressed by those
one-consonnant prepositions. How do you pronounce them in front of a
consonnant cluster?

>> 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 :) .

                                                        Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://rainbow.conlang.org