Re: lateral fricative (was: Láadan and woman's speak)

At 7:15 pm -0700 22/5/00, DOUGLAS KOLLER wrote:
[...]
>
>Sorry, I lost the original thread.
I think you have   :)

I agree the way SHE describes producing the sound of the Láadan {lh} is not
all like the Welsh {ll} or Nguni {hl}.

But her spelling does suggest some sort of lateral fricative.  It was from
there that the thread drifted onto lateral fricatives generally - hence I
changed the title line.

>I speak no Welsh, Zulu, or Xhosa. When I
>tried producing the sound described in the Laádan inventory, I got what
>sounded like a cat hiss, which is certainly not pleasant to the ear (and
>wasn't that the desired effect?), sounds aggressive and confrontational
>(adding to the unpleasantness), and _not_ what I imagine the Welsh "ll" to
>be at all.
You're right - it doesn't sound like a cat hissing  :)

But whether a sound is pleasant or unpleasant is IME very much a subjective
thing.  Many people BTW find Welsh {ll} unpleasant; others do not.

>I could imagine the hissing-cat / unpleasant-female-perspective
>link easily since this is quite traditional, but I really don't know if this
>is what Elgin had in mind, either consciously or unconsciously.
I would've thought, if I've correctly understood Elgin's purpose in
creating Láadan, that she would not consciously have wanted to embed the
catty-female stereotype in her language.

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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