Re: A break in the evils of English (or, Sturnan is beautiful)

En réponse à Christian Thalmann <cinga@...>:

>
> I actually considered using |ei| for /e:/ in Caelva.  I find it the
> assignment quite intuitive, on the same grounds.
>
I consider it intuitive too. [ei] -> [e:] is a reasonable sound change.

>
> Well, /e/ is tense and thus requires more articulation than the lax
> /E/.
Does it? In my opinion it's rather the contrary: you need to open more your
mouth to make [E] than to make [e]. And that's more articulation. At least,
that's my experience. Having a native language that lacks real lax vowels like
[I] or [U], I can tell you by experience that there is nothing really "lax" in
them. In my experience, [I] needs as much energy to pronounce as [i]. the
position of the mouth is a bit different, but pronouncing them needs the same
amount of energy. The only vowel which is really "easier" to pronounce is the
real schwa [@].

  Languages who have both sounds will usually place /e/ in the
> stressed or long syllables, while it slackens into /E/ in less
> important places.
>
More often in [@]. The [e] - [E] thing has usually more to do with absence or
presence of a consonantal coda.

>
> I'd be surprised.  The only reason I can imagine for that to be true
> would be that many /E/s decay into schwas.
>
Different native languages make different opinions.

>
> And then, of course, there's English.  It has /E/ as a phoneme, but
> /e/ only in the diphthong /eI/.
>
Which more and more lacks the last part :)) .

>
> IMHO, a lax and unstressed sound should be written as simply and
> unobtrusively as possible.  I find the final -ë of Quenya-for-English-
> speakers (and of Albanian) very ugly, as it suggests a false
> importance for an unstressed vowel.
>
True, but as I explained the "lax" feature is basically moot. There's nothing
specially "lax" about such vowels, trust my experience. It took me 10 years to
manage to pronounce a correct [I], and I still can't manage [U] consistently.

>
> Or have a look at French:  |e| is /E/ by default in closed syllables
> (e.g. |tresse| /trEs/ or |robinet| /rObinE/),
Oops! The second one was never ever pronounced that way. [robinE] is an old
pronunciation that died more then one century ago (I know only one person who
still pronounces it that way, and it's a politician whose ideas, if we followed
them, would put France back into the 19th century :)) ). Everybody says
[robine] now. [e] rules in open syllables.

 while it degrades even
> further into a rounded schwa in open syllables.  An accent aigu is
> needed to elevate it into the privileged status of /e/!
>
Or an accent grave to è! Or an accent circonflexe ê! or |ai|, or |ei|! On the
other hand, there are only two ways to write [e]: e and é. Taking as a rule
(which is generally true) that something which is marked and special needs to
be marked more than something which is basic, I get the conclusion that in
French [e] is more basic than [E] (and I know it's more complicated than that,
but still my native speaker's feeling tells me that the conclusion is right).
And I've heard people who completely lost the distinction in open syllables and
only pronounce [e], whether stressed or not. If [e] was so much more tense than
[E], I don't understand how this evolution would be possible even in unstressed
syllables!

>
> Because [e] is the "purest" version of |e|.
>
Is it? What's the difference between "most basic" and "purest"?

>
> Didn't Greek have that at some point in its history?  And what about
> the |ei| of Irish?  I thought |eire| was pronounced /e:r_je/.
>
Really? I thought in Irish long vowels were consistently marked with the acute
accent...

>
> > but did see used for [E].
>
> Where?  I can't think of any such language right away.
>
My native language doesn't count? It may be only one, but it's one against zero.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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