Re: More Ere:tas: The fable of the North Wind and the Sun

En réponse à David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>:

> In a message dated 10/31/01 11:04:14 PM, and_yo@HOTMAIL.COM writes:
>
> << (much
> more so than for instance [o] and [O]) >>
>
>     These two vowels are so different that one may as well be an
> obstruent.
> I cannot imagine how anyone could possibly mix these two up, whereas
> mixing
> up [e] and [E] doesn't seem unreasonable to me.  I'm beginning to think
> it's
> just my ears...
>
Indeed it's your ears, the way you had them trained to recognize some sounds
aginst some others, and it all depends on your native tongue. So unless
specifically trained, a Japanese won't recognize at once the difference between
[4](the alveolar flap) and [l]. A speaker of Mandarin won't recognize at once
the difference between French cadeau (gift) and gâteau (cake) since (well, only
now that /a/ and /A/ have merged) they are different only by the voicing of the
consonnants, something which is not contrastive for Mandarin (I had such an
experience, so I know that's true). To me, the difference between the
nasal /a~/ and the sequence /an/ is obvious, and that strong that one could
well be an obstruent :), but my Dutch boyfriend (and some English people I
talked too) just don't hear the difference.

Of course, you can always be trained to hear contrasts that your language
doesn't have, but when it comes to say: "well, those phones sound extremely
near to me", or "those phones sound extremely different to me", the contrasts
recognized by your native tongue will always be the best recognized.

So in your case, your native dialect of English contrasts /o/ and /O/, but
maybe less /e/ and /E/. Funny enough, acoustically [e] and [E] are more
different than [o] and [O] (there is less "absolute" acoustic space between
back vowels than front vowels. That's why many languages - like French - have
more front vowels than back vowels). So because of your native tongue, you hear
better one difference than another, despite the fact that this difference is
less important than the one you tend to confuse. :)

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.