Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: French r

From:Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>
Date:Monday, September 1, 2003, 17:23
At 04:37 PM 9/1/03 +0200, you wrote:
>En réponse à Isidora Zamora : > > >>Sorry, Cristophe. I made a mistake. (And it's inexcusable because I am >>trained...although obviously not trained well enough if this slipped >>through.) I guess that I have heard the French r described as a uvular >>trill so many times that I believed it. > >That's OK. My anger was in no way directed at you, but at anyone telling >you the French r was a trill.
I've read in a lot of places that it is a trill. I wonder why people keep writing that? Maybe they can't *hear* the difference between a fricative and a trill?
>> If I actually *feel* myself >>pronouncing a French word with an r in it, I can tell that I am pronouncing >>a uvular fricative. My apologies for the confusion, and thanks for setting >>me straight. > >You're welcome. But that's no problem anyway since you pronounced >correctly even then :)) .
I probably pronounce it correctly because my high school French teacher was actually French, and I seem to be good at picking up pronunciations when I have a good model. My French accent, however, is *far* better than my French, which is only slightly better than nonexistant. When I was in France and explained, "Je ne parle pas Francais," people refused to believe me because I sounded so good. (Sorry about the misspelling of "Francais"; I've never learned to type with diacritics.)
>Is Isidora Zamora your real name? If so, where do you come from? (come to >think of it, I don't remember seeing you before I came back on the list. >Did you arrive while I was away?)
Yes, it is my real name. My husband's father is Mexican (his mother is American), and Zamora is a common Spanish surname. I took the name Isidora 10 years ago when I converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. I am named after Saint Isidora of Tabenna, the Fool for Christ. She was a nun in Egypt in the 4th century. (When I took her for my patron saint, I was already engaged to my husband, but it didn't occur to me that my name was going to rhyme once we got married.) My husband and I are both American, and we have settled in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky and plan on staying here. It's a very nice area, and my mother-in-law moved up here to be with us, so we can't just move away. I grew up in Illinois, spent my last year of high school in Denmark (Roskilde and Copenhagen area), went to Indiana University to study linguistics, met my husband there, got my degree, got married, had a baby, had another one...and now the children are 8 and 6.5, and I am 31. We homeschool the children. And, yes, I did join the list while you were away, but now you've got my introduction :-) Isidora

Replies

Joe <joe@...>
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
BP Jonsson <bpj@...>
Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>