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

From:Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Wednesday, May 24, 2000, 5:51
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. ========================================= A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language. [J.G. Hamann 1760] =========================================