Re: To Christophe (Uusisuom and Esperanto)

The Other Matt wrote:
>
>Hi all!
>
>Apologies if I'm mis-reading this conversation (or
>butting in where I should not), but it seems to me
>that Daniel (creator of Uusisuom) must have been
>talking about "u" vs "y" when the matter became a
>little heated, and then Matt (all, please note that
>I'm Matt too!) replied that this distinction is quite
>uncommon in most living languages.  Is that right?
>
>Whether that distinction of u vs y is common or not in
>living languages, I for one have got this soft spot
>for that distinction.  I think Daniel's Uusisuom holds
>many elements from Finnish, hence that distinction (as
>will my own Vya:a:h).  Beyond being unique and even
>ambiguous, shouldn't our languages have some pizzazz?
>Spices up the sound/s...
Hm, you seem to believe that Uusisuom {y} and {u} have the same
pronunciations as Finnish {y} and {u} (which's tense [y] and [u] accoridng
to some, and lax [Y] and [U] according to some. Any Finns who'll enlighten
me? Perhaps either is OK?). However, from Daniel44's discriptions, {u} is
lax [U] and {y} tense [u]. It's AFAICT rare among natlangs that this
difference is phonemic, and in any case the differenc is smaller than the
difference between Finnish /u/ and /y/.

Now, this would be perfectly fine if Uusiuom was an artlang. I've seen
natlangs with weirder distinctions than that (weirder to me - presumeably
not to their speakers!). But as Uusisuom is an apparently very serious
attempt at an IAL (International Auxiliary Language), so I and some others
have suggested that it'd make sense not to include distinctions that a very
large number of people (=potential speakers of the IAL) will find difficult
to produce. To take me for an example, I'd pronounce the very word
'Uusisuom' wrongly half the time, with tense [u]s.

                                                          Andreas

PS To Daniel44: I've sort of assumed that that {uo} in 'Uusisuom' is a
diphthong [uo]. Is this correct? Or is it disyllabic [U.o] or something like
that?
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