Re: OT: Phonetics (IPA)

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Cowan" <cowan@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2003 3:41 PM
Subject: Re: Phonetics (IPA)


> Nikhil Sinha scripsit:
>
> > > Since you can readily distinguish [t] and [t_h], you will be better
> > > understood if you consistently use [t_h] for /t/ except after [s],
> > > where [t] is the right thing.
> >
> > I understand what you say. But, if I start doing that I will not be
> > understood in my own country. But, still when I speak to foreigners,
I'll do
> > that. Its not that I cannot speak your way, its that I have got into the
> > habbit of speaking my (Indian) way.
>
> Yes, I should have said "better understood by people who speak other
> kinds of English".  Indian English, after all, is an autonomous dialect
> of English with its own rules, just as much so as American or English or
> Scottish or Irish or Australian English; by contrast, there is no
> specific German or French or Swedish English, merely characteristic
> "foreign accents".
>
> In at least some kinds of Irish English, /t/ and /d/ are pronounced
> alveolar, whereas /T/ and /D/ are pronounced as dental stops.  This
> can make "thirty" sound like "dirty" to speakers of other dialects.
Yes, there is a joke, in which two Irishmen were walking in the woods, and
saw a sign saying "Tree fellers wanted".  And one turned to the other and
said "Well, it's a pity it's only the two of us".

It's not a great joke, but it serves to demonstrate the point.