Re: CHAT: F.L.O.E.S.

At 18:05 22.2.2004, Joe wrote:
>   My pet hate is pronouncing 'Schröder' as [Sr\@ud@].
Mine are "Back, Handle and Moe's Art".
Händel may of course have accepted Handle himself...

Some Swedes saying Basch onm the grounds that [S] and [x]
are allophones in *Swedish* drives me nuts.

At 18:32 22.2.2004, Andreas Johansson wrote:

>I feel your pain. I know people who after ten years of German classes still
>cannot get into their heads that initial 's' and 'z' sound differently, and
>that neither is [s].
Well south Germans (including the ones in Switzerland and Austria :)
have _s-_ as [s], so that is not thaaat bad, but my stepdaughter
saying "Ssajtüng" makes me cringe!

BTW the Fraktur orthography of Latvian used plain _s_ for /z/
but struck-over _s_ for /s/ (likewise _sch_ = /Z/ and _$ch_ = /S/,
/ts/ = _z_, /dz/ = _ds_, /dZ/ = _dsch_, /tS/ = _tsch_ or _t$ch_.
Sooo cool!

At 19:38 22.2.2004, Andreas Johansson wrote:

>Quoting Joe <joe@...>:
>
> > Yes, well, in a non -Rhotic country, that's not a problem.  On the other
> > hand, pronouncing 'der' as [d3:] is not on.  By the way - how do Germans
> > generally pronounce word-final /r/?
>
>Final unstressed '-er' is normally [6]. When a final '-r' is preceeded by
>another vowel, or a stressed 'e' (incl with mute 'h' thrown on like
>in 'sehr'), the vowel stays and the 'r' is [6]. After /a/ it may disappear
>altogether ('klar' [kla:]). 'Der' becomes something like [de6]
I.e. like a non-rhotic English _dare_.

At 20:14 22.2.2004, John Cowan wrote:
>Furthermore, it turns out that Boston scrod
>("I never heard the pluperfect tense before")
What's the joke?

At 01:43 23.2.2004, Trebor Jung wrote:
>
>PS: I got an Estonian textbook from the library once, and I didn't
>understand the explanation for pronouncing <o~>. I read elsewhere that
>even northern Estonians can't pronounce it, so they just say [9] instead;
>that's how I pronounce it. But how _does_ one pronounce this mystery
>letter? I can't seem to find a good explanation of it anywhere...
It's [7] -- back unrounded half closed.  You will get away with whatever
you use for /@/ if you are North-American, since Russians get away with
using their centralized /i\/!


At 06:29 23.2.2004, Nik Taylor wrote:

>Axiem wrote:
> > It really makes me wish our book used hiragana, instead of the really bad
> > romanization.
>
>Personally, I *prefer* that romanization.  I often tend to write {ti}
>instead of {chi} for example.
IMNSHO Scandinavians ought to spell _sj/tj/dj_ when quoting
Japanese, instead of taking the detour over English, and
of course _Dzudzuki_ as well as _Mitsubisi_.

At 15:46 23.2.2004, Douglas Koller, Latin & French wrote:

>Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! /k&rioki/ makes my flesh crawl. It's
>/karaoke/, plain and simple. People may think I sound affected when I
>say it that way, but I've lived in Japan -- I've earned it.
I would rather have expected /k&r@ouki/.  Where does /i/ as
pronunciation of _a_ come from?

Gothenburgers say [k_hQrQ'o:k3\], BTW.
The thing itself makes my flesh crawl, whatever the pronunciation!

At 17:26 23.2.2004, And Rosta wrote:

>In English, /s/ and /z/ are neutralized morpheme-internally before
>sonorants in the following onset. So ['l&zlou] is not merely a
>spelling pronunciation, but a regular anglicization. That said, I
>have noticed that <sz> in Hungarian surnames of English people does
>get done as /z/ (e.g. the English poet George Szirtes is called
>/'z3:ti:z/ by others &, I believe, himself, instead of (in English
>phonology) /'sI@tES/; I expect he got fed up of correcting
>mispronunciations of his name and acquiesced in its mispronounciation,
As did the "Swedish" pianist János Solyom /'jA:nOs 'sOljOm/,
and I had a teacher György who tolerated /j&\rg/!

Myself I don't tolerate [bEnt] for Benct, for perhaps obvious
reasons, while I do tolerate [bE~t] and [beint], and even [bEn],
as well as ['fIlIp dZAnsn=] rather than [fi:lip jUns:on].
When my father travelled in France he even made it easy for himself
by accepting _Philippe Johnson_ (giving his surname as
"Comme le president Americain", which gives away the age he would
have been, had he still lived.

>just as I have done with mine for the last ten years or so, and as,
>say, Italoamericans with <gli> in their names do). Come to think of
>it, <zs> gets turned into /z/ too. And while Kovacs ends in
>/ks/, I recall an American-footballer called Larry Csonka, who
>was rendered Zonka (as if, perhaps, the spellings were <Kovax> and
><Xonka>?).
Rather a rule "anything funny involving _c z s x_ is /z/.
I've heard Tibetan initial _Ts-_ as /z/ from Anglophones!

At 00:48 24.2.2004, Mark J. Reed wrote:

>Using CXS, plus an attempt at French phonetic versions from what little I
>recall of French phonetics, the shifts are as follows:
>
>[a] becomes [e]         (a becomes é)
rather:
[A] becomes [E] (a becomes è)

In German there were two rounds of i-umlaut.
By the first short *a became *æ [&].  This
*æ later rised to [E], and was written _e_, thus
undistinguished from *e [e], except by modern
scholars who write it _ë_.
Later long *â became *^æ [&:] which rised to [E:]
and was written _æ_.
Modern German _ä_ is everywhere written either to
distinguish homonyms, or because there are preserved
obvious cognates with _a_ (Arm/Ärme).  The pronunciation
[E:] is a pure spelling pronunciation, part of educated
pronunciation, but not everybody has it.

In Swedish and Danish orthography the _e/ä (e/æ)_ distribution
is also largely unetymological, although many dialects preserve
the historical distinction of /e/ and /E/.  In Norwegian _æ_ is
only used for etymological [æ:] before _r_.  Not everyone have
a phonemic distinction from /e:/.

In Finnish _ä_ is merely the spelling of what has been /&/ since
time before reconstruction, or almost, depending on how speculative
your reconstruction is.

Anglophones do better pronounce _ä/æ_ as /&/ to be on the safe side! :)
Swedish _man_ is /man/ but _män_ (the plural) is /mEn/.


/BP 8^)
--
   B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Truth, Sir, is a cow which will give [skeptics] no more milk,
and so they are gone to milk the bull."
                                     -- Sam. Johnson (no rel. ;)

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