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

On Wednesday, October 31, 2001, at 11:49 , David Peterson wrote:

> 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...
:-)  It happens with my ears, too, but that's because of my dialect (?) of
English, which differentiates between [o] and [O] but neglects [e] and [E]
  (it took a couple years of French for me to realize there *was* a
difference), and also because of Korean, which doesn't have [O], and
*theoretically* differentiates between [e] and [E], but that distinction
is all but dead among (Seoul-area?) speakers of my generation.

Yoon Ha Lee [requiescat@cityofveils.com]
http://pegasus.cityofveils.com

People say I'm indecisive, but I'm not sure about that.