Re: French r

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

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