Re: OT: English and schizophrenia

> >That's true, but it does have a voiceless interdental fricative
> [T], which
> >is one of the other supposedly difficult sounds you mentioned.
>
> Yes. Still, I am not absolutely certain, but I have the feeling that a
> foreigner mispronouncing "azucar" as "asucar" would have better
> chances of
> being understood than a foreigner mispronouncing "think" as "sink".
True, but that's because [s] is the pronunciation of /T/ in many
dialects.  Better stated, many dialects of Spanish, including all of
those spoken in Latin America, don't distinguish between [s] and [T]
anymore, pronouncing them both as [s].  So a Castilian Spaniard hearing
[asuk'ar] for his [aTuk'ar] would merely assume that the speaker is of a
different dialect.  This dœsn't even mean that there couldn't be
confusion: there are plenty of minimal pairs: casa/caza is the first that
comes to mind.

> Just that, for my personal difficulty of getting both tonality and
> tense/lax opposition, I would find it very difficult. I believe that
> I
> would tend to mispronounce all high pitched vowels as tense. Of
> course, I
> am aware that the speakers of this language would find a language
> without
> these features probably very difficult too.
Odd--I don't think I would have this problem.  Of course, I find tone
nearly impronounceable and grossly ugly anyway.


Jesse S. Bangs     Pelíran
jaspax @juno.com
"There is enough light for those that desire only to see, and enough
darkness for those of a contrary disposition."  --Blaise Pascal