Re: David P's "month" (was: Poll by Email No. 3)

En réponse à "M.E.S." <suomenkieli@...>:

>
> Not sure, though, if I'm confused or totally wrong
> about the "u" of _muse_.  I think it would be /y/ --
> is that the same sound as [ju].  All I can recall is
> that if a value is given between brackets [] or slashs
> //, then it may have a different corresponding sound.
> Does [ju] equal /y/ ?  Sorry for the elementary
> questions, folks!
>
[y] is the French "u" of "lune", that English-speaking people do tend to
approximate as [ju], but that's a mistake due to the lack of this sound in
their language. [ju] would be /ju/ or /u/ in English, depending whether you
consider it an allophone of /u/ or not.

As for notation, // marks phonemes (the abstract entities speakers recognise.
For instance, despite the fact that the "t" of "top" and the "t" of "stop" are
actually different sounds, English speakers consider them as one entity, the
phoneme /t/), while [] marks phones (the actual sounds. For instance, the /t/
of "top" is actually pronounced [t_h] - aspirated -, while the /t/ of "stop" is
pronounced [t] - non-aspirated -).

You really need to download the program IPA Help from SIL and to study
attentively the page: http://www.cs.brown.edu/~dpb/ascii-ipa.html (do as I did:
print it :)) ), or else you'll never really the sound notation. Believe me, it
doesn't take that much time to take the grasp of it.

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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