Re: Newbie here

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> > My name is Andreas Johansson (pronounced [andre:as juan:son], front a's
> > please), I'm a 19 years old Swede. I'm studying Natural
>Science-Technology
>
><guilty look>  I still can't differentiate some subtle vowels
>distinctions, but thank goodness for email.
If the a's are like the first part of the diphthong in English "eye" it's
right. If they sound like a short version of the a in "father" I'll be
slightly unhappy. But no worries - the worst thing that can happen is that
your a's get across as /o/'s to my Swedish ears!
>
> > These aren't very exotic; Tairezazh is pretty "European-style" with four
> > cases (nom, acc, dat and gen), two numbers (sg and pl), three tenses
>(past,
> > present and future) and 35 phonemes (five short vowels, three long
>vowels,
> > five diphthongs, six stops, eight fricatives, four affricates, two
>liquids
> > and two nasals - the /m/ phoneme can only occure initially). The
>commonest
>
>/m/ doesn't do any sort of complementary distribution thing?  Just
>wondering.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean. The /m/ PHONEME can only occure
initially. The SOUND [m] also occures medially as an allophone of the /n/
morpheme when before /b/ or /p/. /m/ and /n/ can contrast initially, eg
_mek_ "yellow" and _nek_ "spaceport".

Do that answer your question?

                                             Andreas
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