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Re: Request for help, Spanish

From:Christophe Grandsire <grandsir@...>
Date:Monday, October 11, 1999, 7:08
Nik Taylor wrote:
> > I'm currently working on Lunj (<Lunis < Luna + -is), the official > language of the Pan-Human Republic. It is descended from a > Spanish-lexified creole, with substrate influence from English and > Esperanto (a language spoken in a number of Lunar colonies), and > probably other languages. Now, the questions I have are these: > > What is the distribution of the allophones [a] and [A] in Spanish? And > do all dialects have those allophones? >
I'm pretty sure that Castillian doesn't have those allophones, but it's the opinion of a non-native speaker that hasn't spoken Spanish for more then three years now, so don't take it for granted. :)
> What are the pronunciations of {ll} and {y} in different dialects? > Particularly in Mexican dialects. >
I know that {ll} is pronounced [l_j], [j] or [S] and {y} is pronounced [j] or [i]. I don't know about other pronunciations.
> One sound change involves the loss of intervocalic voiced stops. Now, > in words like "ciudad", this would produce [sju'a] (I think, or is it > [sju'A]?). What should I do with those kinds of words? Ordinarily, > unstressed high vowels become glides when prevocalic, but *[sjwa] would > be impossible. Would it be reasonable for that to become a rounded > glide, that is [s;ha]? Or would it be reasonable for an epenthetic [w] > to be added, creating [sju'wa]? Or should I just leave it at [sju'a]? > Or, might the [j] be vocalized, creating [si'wa]? >
I like [sju'a], but it depends on how far in future you want to put this language. [sju'a] is more likely to be recent than old. For an older stage of the language, I'm thinking of something like: [sju'a]->[Su'a]->[Sua]->[Swa]. The change [sj]->[S] is very likely to happen IMHO, as it generally happens also synchronically (try to pronounce very fast a word with [sj] -I can't come up with one at the moment-). In fact, I even think that it could happen at the same time or even before the loss of intervocalic stops, so [Su'a] would be more likely than [sju'a], even at an early stage of the language.
> -- > "No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of > kittens" - Abraham Lincoln > http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files > http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html > ICQ: 18656696 > AIM Screen-Name: NikTailor
-- Christophe Grandsire Philips Research Laboratories -- Building WB 145 Prof. Holstlaan 4 5656 AA Eindhoven The Netherlands Phone: +31-40-27-45006 E-mail: grandsir@natlab.research.philips.com