Re: CHAT: Blandness (was: Uusisuom's influences)

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> John Cowan wrote
> > I haven't heard enough Finnish to comment
I have.  I find it quite beautiful.  My pastor is Finnish, and we have a
Finnish exchange student there, too.  So, they occasionally speak in
Finnish.

> <embarrassed look>  What's Wolof and where's it spoken, or by whom?
It's a major language of West Africa, thought to have been a big
influence in Black English, at least, lexically.

> Er...where can I find a definition of "syllable-timed" rhythm?
A language wherein every syllable is pronounced with the same length, as
opposed to stress-timed, like most dialects of English, wherein there is
a roughly equal time between *stressed* syllables (Carribean English is
syllable-timed, which contributes to its rather distinct, and, IMO,
beautiful, rhythm).  Japanese is a mora-timed language.

> Japanese would be monotonous in its metronomicity (?) if it weren't for
> the varying pitch accents.
That's another beautiful language.  I've been watching Sailor Moon
subtitled lately, and sometimes I like to just have it on without
watching, just to listen to the Japanese.  :-)  Of course, it's also
really fun to hear them throw in random bits of English "No
puraburemu!", and, of course, their attacks.  :-)

> How have other people handled stress/accent?
Uatakassí uses a Japanese-inspired pitch-accent system.  The rules are:
1.  Make all syllables low
2.  Make the stressed syllable high
3.  If the stressed syllable is non-initial, make all following
syllables high
4.  If the following word is initially-stressed, and the final syllable
of the current word is high, make it falling.

So:
kifísnai (they - gender 5) =              kifísnái (í = high pitch)
kísna (it - gender 5) =                   kísna
Bannássatu kísna (it.G5 begins to walk) = bannássátù kísna (ù = falling)

So, the pitches automatically determine word-boundaries

--
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A nation without a language is a nation without a heart - Welsh proverb
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