Re: To Christophe (Uusisuom and Esperanto)

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, Daniel44 wrote:
>
> > Here, Christophe, is the difference between 'u' and 'y':
> >
> > 'u' pronounced like the 'u' in 'pUt'
> > 'y' pronounced like the 'ui' in 'sUIt'
> >
> > Just because you may have some trouble distinguishing between these two
> > sounds, does not automatically mean they are not two valid and distinct
> > sounds and that other people automatically have trouble pronouncing them.
> > You are assuming too much.
>
> Ano...anyone have statistics on the percentage of vowel systems that do
> make that distinction?  A Korean could do it easily.  Most
> English-speakers probably could (in the U.S., anyway...?).  I don't know
> about a Japanese speaker who has ieaou for his/her vowel system, or an
> Arabic speaker who has aiu for his/her vowel system.  Perhaps it would be
> worth surveying the existing speaker base and asking how many find that
> distinction easy/hard?
My sense is that the /u/ - /U/ distinction is quite uncommon in the world's
languages.

Ian Maddieson, a phonetician who used to be here at UCLA and is now at Berkeley,
wrote a very useful survey of the sounds of the world's languages, based on UPSID
(the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database).  The book is called "Patterns
of Sounds", published by Cambridge University Press (1984), and is a useful
reference for anyone interested in making their artlang/auxlang naturalistic,
and/or taking statistical frequency data into account in their designs.

Of course, Daniel44 has already expressed a contempt for linguists, so I doubt if
he'll be interested.  But others might...

Matt.

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