Re: Uusisuom's influences
| From: | Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, April 1, 2001, 20:59 |
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Daniel44
>Uusisuom is no where near as complicated as Finnish. It is a genuinely easy
>language to study, learn and use.
>
>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.
I'm not a native speaker of English, and I happily admit that my
pronunciation isn't perfect. But what's a "huge" difference varies from
person to person a bit. You think the vowels in "boot" and "foot" are very
different - I find them very similar. Then I've met native English-speakers
that couldn't tell the difference between [i:] and [y:], which to my ears is
huge. IME most people who's mother-tongue doesn't have this distinction find
them difficult to tell apart.
From an "ease of learning" perspective, a good IAL should probably have very
few vowels, sharply distinct from each other. /i e a o u/ or even /i a u/
would be nice simple inventories.
Andreas
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