Re: Sounds of Quenya?

On 1/28/06, Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:
> AIUI, trema is two dots, whereas diaeresis is the phenomenon of not
> diphthonizing adjacent vowels (much like umlaut is a phenomenon, not
> strictly a diacritic).
You're right, of course.  I read it backwards as "diaresis is used for
trema".  I'm not even dyslexic, so I don't have that excuse.  Sorry
for the spurious snark.

> >> ry is troublesome to me since I can't grok /r_j/
> >
> > I suggest trying to hear it in Japanese, which IIRC has a phonemic
> > distinction between /r_j/ and /rj/.
>
> AIUI (again), Japanese has /4/ not /r/.
Actually, the realization of the Japanese rhotic seems to vary quite a
bit, and I wasn't being precise by referring to it as /r/.  Sorry.
It's true that [4] is one allophone; I  think [r\] may even be one.
But hey, if you can do [4_j], you can do [r_j] - it's just [4_j] over
and over and over really fast. ;-)

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>