Re: Describing sound (was: Chicken Cacciatore & 2 questions about E-o)

--- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
"uspex" (success),
>
> Yes there is. Please explain how _uspex_ can be
> pronounced in 101
> different ways.
This was supposed to be what we call a "raisonnement
par l'absurde" (don't know the exact English
expression). I didn't say that there are 101 ways to
pronounce "Bach" in German, but as soon as I say that
Russian "x" is something like German "ch" in "Bach" or
"j" in Spanish "navaja", plenty of people stood up
protesting that there are plenty of different ways to
pronounce these words. That's why I said that
apparently, there were 101 ways to pronounce Bach, or
navaja, or uspex, or whatever, and so it is simply
impossible to discuss any further.

(snip)

> Nope - people tend to follow dialect patterns.
Dialect patterns, IMO, are only one tiny element among
101 good reasons people have to pronounce a word not
quite the way you would expect it. It of course
depends of sex, age, social and cultural level, brand
of tobacco you smoke, and many, many more, including
who is your favourite movie actor.

> > I wonder how people
> > can understand each other when speaking ?
>
> Because we rarely speak in single words - most of
> us, even you I think,
> speak words _in context_. Natural languages have a
> good deal of in-built
> redundancy which help, usually successfuly, meaning
> to be conveyed even
> tho we have a certain amount of"noise" or
> interference - and regional
> differences of pronoucing /x/ are just one such.
> You really must learn
> how natural languages actually work.
Yes, I knew that. I was kind of kidding (French
humour, you know ?)

> > (BTW, French would rather pronounce "Bach" as
> "Bak",
> > at least when talking about Jean-Sebastien, but
> one
> > should definitely NOT ask a Frenchman how to
> pronounce
> > German words.
>
> Nor English words - my daughter-in-law, who is a
> French speaker, having
> been born and brought up almost in the center of the
> Hexagon, finds the
> pronunciation of English names by most French
> radio/TV announcers to be
> ludicrous.
It is worse when they pronounce words from other
languages. BTW, the fact that you mention "the center
of the Hexagon" proves that you already got a good
level in French culture :-)

> > > (BTW, French would rather pronounce "Bach" as
> "Bak",
> > > at least when talking about Jean-Sebastien,
>
> Would that be the one we in the UK call 'Johann
> Sebastian'? (Or did this
> prolific family have French members?)
We renamed him Jean Sébastien, because no civilizated
father would ever call his son by such a barbarian
first name as Johann Sebastian.



=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


		
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