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Re: Alphabet

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Friday, November 2, 2001, 9:57
En réponse à David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>:

> > Then mine is, too. :) I realize phonetically and acoustically > why > voiceless sounds require more oomph, but voiced sounds seem harder. > Why? > They're louder, first of all, so they hit the ears harder. Second, they > seem > more angry. Observe: "pitch" neutral term; "bitch" very bad word. > "Pad" a > thing; "bad" self-explanatory. "Tie" around your neck; "die" death! > "Call" > something you do; "gall" an angry emotion! Or the first part of a > bladder > that's going to be a lot of trouble for me when I hit fifty. "Chin" > part of > the body; "gin", one of the Demon Alcohol's minions. Then there's > "pour" and > "boar", the former being a gentle verb, the latter being a wild pig (or > a > tiresome person or something a drill does into your skin). And, who > could > forget this example: "pious", someone who doesn't bother anyone, and > "bias", > the root of all evil. > Who can dispute such incontrovertible evidence? Thus, voiced stops > are > indeed harder than voiceless stops. Case closed. >
He he... I'll answer with only two examples from French: "bal", a nice party with dancing (or even "balle", a nice round bouncing thing :)) ), and "pal", a delicacy among amateurs of torture (Prince Vlad was well known to be an amateur of this kind of show :) ), and "jarre", a nice-looking bottle, often looked for by collectioner, and "char", a violent, metallic, ugly war vehicle. Now dare say that voiced consonnants are harder than voiceless... :)))))))) Christophe. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

Replies

Frank George Valoczy <valoczy@...>
Keith Gaughan <kmgaughan@...>