Re: OT: Phonetics (IPA)

>But aside from that, I'm again being astounded by what little relationship
>there seem to be between what people hear and the actual physical
>characterica
>of speech sounds.
Well, what my brain acknowldeges hearing is coloured by what it has learned
to hear and differntiate. If my only language had remained USA English, I
doubt that I'd immediately be able to recognise the variety of phonemes I
now do as a result of having studied German, Spanish, French, Chinese,
Japanese, Welsh, etc. (no, I'm not fluent in all these, but study of them
did broaden my "ear"). I still cannot hear the diff between [A] and [7]. :(

Plus the human mechanism for hearing a sound is structurally different from
that which produces sounds. Since the medium is waves, as long as one wave
is not sufficiently different from another, it might be heard as the same.

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