Re: CHAT: The [+foreign] attribute

En réponse à John Cowan <jcowan@...>:

>
> No, I misled you: that was meant to be an English-type bunched "r", not
> uvular.
>
Ha! OK.

>
> No, it's a matter IMO of over-applying pronunciation heuristics:
>
> 1) In English and French, final -e is silent;
>
> 2) In French, final consonants are dropped (more or less).
>
> Unfortunately, if one applies both rules in succession, "fixe" gets
> rendered [fi].  I think the fact of two {x}es in succession doesn't
> help either: she remembers that the first {x} goes away, but then
> overdoes it so that the second one disappears too.
>
Strange, since the presence of the final -e is just to prevent the dropping of
the final consonants! Hence, the rules are taken in the wrong order...

> Of course, when calm she knows the correct rules, but can't quite
> keep them straight under the pressure of face-to-face conversation.
That's the problem of literary teaching. If your wife had learnt to speak
French, rather than learnt to read it and then learnt how to pronounce what she
reads, those problems would never happen. French education is the same: we
don't learn much English without a text in front of our eyes, which explains
why French people are probably some of the worst L2 English speakers of the
world, even when they can read English fairly well (Japanese people are also
very bad, but that's due to phonotactical problems :)) ).

> (Which is a strange expression: until the telephone, there was no
> other kind!  Similar cases: "analog watch", "snow skiing", "postal
> mail".)
>
LOL, strange that it's the original version that receives a specialised name,
rather than the offspring. In French it's the contrary: "montre" is normally
understood as an analog watch. "Montre digitale" is the other kind (or we can
use the expressions "montre à aiguille" and "montre à chiffres", but then both
kinds are separately named, and those names are used only to prevent
confusion). "Ski" is always understood to be on snow. Waterskiing is always
called "ski nautique". And in this case there's no special expression to
specify that we're talking about snow skiing, it's always taken as the basic
meaning of "ski". As for "courier", the French word for "mail", it is also
always understood to be postal mail. For electronic mail, you say "courier
électronique" or simply "(e-)mail" :) . The term "courier postal" exists, but
that's an administrative term used nearly only be the post itself. Somehow
French people seem rather to keep names for original things and give new names
to specialised offsprings, something that I personally find rather logical.
Surprising that English is different in that respect...

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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