Re: Uusisuom's influences

On Sun, 1 Apr 2001, Daniel44 wrote:

> I think there is a HUGE difference between 'y' and 'u' and indeed between
> the 'oo' in 'boot' and 'foot'. It's a question of pronouncing these words
> correctly.
Depends on how many vowels your native tongue(s) has, I would think.  I
find it a very significant difference--but then, I speak English.  (And
Korean, which has a semi-large vowel system.)

But if someone is a native speaker of a language where there are only a
few vowels, say [i] [a] [u], then the difference between [u] and [U] is
pretty much moot.

And if a foreign-language speaker produces [u] for both [u] and [U] in
English, I have a pretty good chance of understanding him/her, and if
his/her pronunciation is a bit off-target--well, I've tried learning
other languages and I can't say my pronunciation is perfect, either.
:-p  Some people just pick up new sounds better than others.

Now, if they're substituting [o] for [i] or something like that, I'm
going to have a tough time understanding them.

> There is lee way in pronouncing letters like 't', it can be both aspirated
> and unaspirated.
There's another area where "huge difference" is relative.  Aspiration is
phonemic in Korean, so it's a "huge" difference to a Korean whether
you're aspirating or not.  But in English--well, a lot of
English-speakers I've met can't hear the difference, even though they do
produce it ([p] in "spy" or "stop" vs. "pet").

> I agree that when a creator tries too hard to make their language 'neutral',
> it ends up being bland and boring. Thus, I have strived to make Uusisuom
> much more natural looking and sounding whilst also being simple and
> appealing enough to serve as an international auxiliary language (or brother
> tongue as I like to describe it!)
No sisters?  ^_^

YHL

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