Re: Phonology

En réponse à Peter Clark <peter-clark@...>:

>
>         Well, since it is generally A Good Thing (TM) to learn new
> sounds
> (especially handy in natlang contexts--I can think of several occasions
> where
> I have heard tone-deaf monolingual English speakers make mincemeat of
> French
> and Russian, to the point where I cringed, nails-on-blackboard, and want
> to
> run away screaming), I suggest you boldly take your life into your hands
> like
> a man and risk swallowing your tongue (although, I should note, it is
> very
> unlikely that you will do so, unless you take up Klingon. ;)
Or Georgian :)))

>         The obvious answer is "PRACTICE!" but you already knew that. The
> next answer
> is to learn the IPA. Start by first understanding the sounds you already
> know
> from English. Learn what it means to be a voiced interdental fricative.
> Then,
> once you have an understanding of how English sounds work, branch
> outwards,
> starting from the English sounds. For instance, /x/ is a voiceless
> velar
> fricative. In terms of correct tongue position, it is very close to /k/,
> a
> voiceless velar stop. So, if you understand what is involved with a
> fricative
> and a stop, you will find /x/ mindlessly easy to pronounce. From there,
> you
> can learn how to pronounce a uvular fricative, or a palatal fricative,
> or a
> palatal stop, etc.
Well, my answer was gonna be exactly the same, so let's not repeat :)) . I just
want to add that a nice tool to learn IPA is the program IPAHelp (just google
it and you'll find it easily. I think it's available on the site of SIL). I
know it helpes me a lot, especially thanks to its sound files with single
sounds but also sentences. There is also a webpage somewhere which is a "poor
man" version of IPA Help, but which may be useful if you cannot install this
little program.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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