Re: 5 phonemes, was: Another phonological extreme

Basilius:

> > I actually tried E the other day at work. Although I changed it to
> > Schwa. /@: @ @ @:::: @ @:: @/ It worked amazingly well.
> Details, please!!!
Ok. We got into talking about him speaking Dutch, since he'd been living
there for four years. I asked him to demonstrate and then he spoke
Dutch and I answered in Swedish. Quite funny since I don't know Dutch
one bit, and not that much German either. Then I claimed that if we
just could say /@/ (or rather /2/ since he doesn't know what a schwa is)
it would probably work just as well.

It went something like this:

Me: "@ @ @:: @:: @ @ @@@@?" 'Did you fax this trade to our counterparty?'

Co-worker: "@:" 'Yes.'

Me: "@ @:: @ @@@ @ @:::: @?" 'And did you register it in Excel?'

Co-worker: "@ @@ @::: @: @ @ @:::" 'Not yet, but give it to me and
                                    I'll do it right away.'

Though I cheated a little by holding up the trade in question.
And it wasn't to hard to guess what his second comment meant when
he reached out his hand. I guess context is everything. :)

> > The more humorous one of my cow-orkers liked it. He also asked if
> > I had a website and I had to show it to him.
> This one?
> http://hem.passagen.se/noldo/rinya.html
Yep. Or the redirect address http://conlang.nu. Although the info on
Rinya is completely out of date now.

Daniel