Re: Unilang: in Practice

At 9:26 pm -0400 18/4/01, Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
>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?"
I congratulate you on seeing the light far earlier than I did.  I stuck
with that bunch for three or four years.  It was the petty
inter-Novialachist wars that finally made me quit.

>Since I'm still fairly connected to reality,
Good for you - it took me awhile to re-adjust to reality after quitting
that surreal world  :)

>I don't actually dream of _making_
>people speak in some way I've decided.
You do well to high-light _making_ IME - that does seem to be the attitude
of some denizens of that list.

>I do it for my own academic stimulation, i.e. "fun".
Great - sounds just like my long unfinished 'briefscript' project.  Yes,
one we lose the "fun" goal, then IMO we do start getting things out of
perspective.

>
>>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.
I agree on both points.

>
>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.
Ye-e-e-s - but the Mandarin version is a voiced retroflex alveopalatal
fricative, not the AngloAmerican alveolar approximant.  The uvular trill is
considered 'old-fashioned' in modern France; the normal sound given now is
the 'Parisian' uvular approximant.  I'm just a bit worried that the range
is too wide for all the variations to be easily regarded as allophones of
/r/.

>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.
By which I assume unilang will have an essentially (entirely?) a_posteriori
vocabulary.

>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.
Agreed - but the trouble is that learners do not always accomplish them.  I
have a multicultural mix of students and while the English most is
comprehensible, some are diffult to follow and the English of many of their
parents is extremely difficult to follow.  I also know that overseas
students do often have trouble with native speakers who do not use a south
west London accent or the American of cartoons & films.  It's not so much
ease of pronunciation, I think, that is the problem, but ease of
perception; with a small range of phonemes as, e.g. Hawaian, there must
surely be less likelihood of hearing a sound as the wrong phoneme, than
there is in a language like English where, e.g. I remember mis-hearing a
Tamil student's "symbol" as "simple".

'Taint an easy business to know where to strike the balance.  FWIW I've had
similar problems with my briefscript project - tho for different reasons -
and I long tried to ditch /r/ and keep only /l/.  But I think I'll have to
retain /r/ - I can't think of anything better to use {r} for.  At the
moment I'm wondering if I can keep it as a trill, in the Welsh practice,
either apical (the normal one) or uvular (in some parts of north Wales).

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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