Re: Unilang: in Practice

On Wed, 18 Apr 2001 19:30:04 +0000, Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
wrote:

>Yes, I think you're safe here.  We did agree some time back that
>_construction_ of an auxlang is Ok here; it's the Auxlang politics that
>belong to that other list (where, as you say, some characters are kind of
>touchy ;)
Just consider that I spent something like 4-5 months of active writing on
that list, until I realized that those guys simply aren't interested in
auxlang theory. I finally snapped when, upon presenting some scheme similar
to this, along with lots of general ponderings about the matter, I just got
asked: "Who's your language for? How do you intend to propagate it?" Since
I'm still fairly connected to reality, I don't actually dream of _making_
people speak in some way I've decided. I do it for my own academic
stimulation, i.e. "fun".


>I also agree that if Oskar really wants that "All sounds should be roughly
>approximable by any speaker of any human language. Distinctions between
>sounds should be as basic as possible.", then only one liquid is desirable.
>It's well known that Chinese & Japanese speakers have problems with
>AngloAmerican /l/ and /r/ - but they are not the only one.  Some African
>languages do not readily the two - and the pronunciations of /r/ in the
>worlds languages varies enormously.
Well, that's just a question of personal evaluation. I believe we agree on
the premises, the guidelines, which is most important.

Up until now, I've always been against /r/ in the unilang. My tolerance for
it stems from the fact that there are various methods left to pronounce /r/
that do not conflict with the other phonemes (and would be generally
recognizable), primarily the alveolar-trilled-as-per-Spanish, coronal-
approximant-as-per-English-or-Mandarin, or uvular-trilled-as-per-French.

But it's not just that. My thought is that we are, sooner or later, forced
to make concessions in the "ease" factor. One reason is, there is a certain
minimum of phonemes that we'll need, if we are not to run into lexical
problems. Another is renderability. Finally, though it may not be an
argument per se, I think the "ease" factor is rather overrated; the
acquisition of some of these basic sounds can hardly be unsurmountable,
compared to what language learners generally have to accomplish. The
importance of the ease factor would also decrease when the "propagation"
process of the unilang would draw to an end; that is, if the world had
actually accepted a single auxlang, kids would be extremely exposed to it
pretty much from start, and would hardly have lifelong problems with its
pronunciation. I've been exposed to English most of my life, though it's
not my native language; it's only now that I'm realizing how "hard" all
those "foreign" sounds are, that I learnt rather easily in my childhood.


Óskar

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