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Re: NATLANG: o 0? re: consonant clusters

From:Robert B Wilson <han_solo55@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 11, 2002, 0:34
On Tue, 10 Dec 2002 20:01:24 +1100 Tristan <kesuari@...> writes:
> Nik Taylor wrote: > > >Christophe Grandsire wrote: > > > > > >>Yes indeed. Which shows how strange English is, which keeps > untouched clusters > >>like /sk-/ and /st-/, but simplified clusters like /kn-/, /ks-/ or > /gz-/, and > >>still does synchronically :)) . > >> > >> > But! But! That's because /st-/ is easy to pronounce, but /gz-/ > isn't! > (There, a definitive statement!) Gah, just you wait until someone > decides the /@/ is a terrorist plot to confuse us all or something. > Then > we'll all be talking of gzells and the like, so fear not.
i've actually heard the pronounciation [gzEL] for 'gazelle', so it's already happening... there seems to be a tendency in english to lose shwas.
> >:-) It is odd. But, I suspect that at least part of the reason is > that > >/sk/ /st/ /sp/ is more common than /kn/, etc. was. If we dropped > the > >/s/, there'd be *lots* of ambiguity, whereas simplifying, e.g., > /kn/ to > >/n/ only created a few homophones (night/knight, know/no, knot/not, > >knead/need being the only ones I can think of, and the last of > those is > >only homophonous because the GVS also messed with the > pronunciation). > > > >Of course, we could also have gone the Romance route of adding a > sound, > >/st/ -> /@st/ or /s@t/ perhaps. > > > Yeah, but English has such a thing for nice, short words. I look at > our > bathroom scales and it has 'not legal for trade' on it, and then the > translation into French which is full of multi-syllable behemoths > that > you'd think it was German apart from the fact that it looks French > (and > it doesn't have quite enough long words quite long enough).
i'm looking at one right now and it says 'NOT LEGAL FOR TRADE' and 'NON LEGALE POUR LE COMMERCE' (looks like a weird dialect of english to me), only two syllables longer, AFAICT (i don't understand french orthography at all, i can understand written french reasonably well, but i can't understand spoken french at all). i don't see any "multi-syllable behemoths"...
> And anyway, any schwa you add I can take away.
english seems to have a tendency to lose shwas rather than add them.
> On a vaguely related note, if you create a syllabic consonant and > then > you make it no longer syllabic but rather the combination of a schwa > and > the consonant, is the schwa more likely to go before the consonant, > or > is this just me making assumptions?
i think it would be more likely to go before the consonant, but i'm not sure.
> Tristan
Robert Wilson http://kuvazokad.free.fr/ Yessessë Eru ontanë Menel ar Cemen. Yessessë ëa Quetta ar Quetta né as Eru ar Eru né Quetta.

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Tristan <kesuari@...>