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

Alright, there seems to be some confusion going on here about who claimed
what.  Rather than plaguing the list with a dozen of reply mails, I'll try to
sum it all up in one message.


> > > and was backed up by other people.
> >
> > As was I.
> >
> Where? All other replies there were were all saying that whatever logic
may be
> behind your claim, it was probably not going to be what people will think
> first, and will mostly confuse rather than enlighten people.
Actually, Jesse Bangs and Nik Taylor endorsed my point, while most others
said something non-denominational along the lines of "it's weird, but much
weirder things happen".



> But I never said that my way was more logic. I just said that it was
> more common!
"Common" is a weird word to use for a statistic that consists of one
example.

I think we can agree that any use of |ei| for anything other than /ej/
is non-trivial, and requires explanation.  I can tell you I didn't find
|ei| for /E/ intuitive when I learnt French spelling, but surely the
German pronunciation /aj/ and the English or Modern Greek /i:/ require
the same mental adaption effort.

Interestingly, the distinction of /aj/ and /ej/ seems to be rather unstable
in European langs: It tends to collapse into one phoneme (French |ai ei|
--> /E/, English |ai ay ey| --> /ej/, German |ai ei| --> /aj/) or
dissimulate as in Modern Greek |ai ei| --> /E i/.



> My whole point was that "logic" is pointless in this
> matter! (something about diplomacy and good manner: listening to the
> other is always a sign of diplomacy and good manner)
Why should logic be pointless?  It is an important part of intuition
(experience being the other part).  People who don't have the experience of French
orthography uppermost in their minds will have to resort to other experiences,
or to logic.

As for my somewhat emotional response:  That's what happens when you make
generalisations like "I don't think *anyone* would ever naturally
connect |ei| to [e]" although there are several people who do on this
list, or (implicitly) "the French of your France-born grandmother and
your France-born teacher of French and of pretty much every native French
TV announcer / radio jockey is ridiculous and not real French".



John Cowan wrote:

> The German is Christian Thalmann, of course, and if you don't know
> where he fits in, re-read the whole thread.
That would make sense if I actually were German.  =P   By the way, /le
almaN pRonONs l2 fraNse: k_hOm sa/  ;-)


Summary of Main Points Discussed in this Thread:

1)  |ei| for /E/ is from a phonetic point of view less logical than /e/.

    Everyone seems to agree to that (though some consider this aspect
    too theoretic to be important for the issue of intuitivity).

2)  |ei| for /E/ is plausible.

    Again, everyone agreed to that (yes, even JS Bangs, who started the
    discussion, said that it was "very odd", not implausible).  Some on
    this list consider this use counter-intuitive, but probably less so
    than e.g. German |eu| /oj/ or French |oi| /wa/.


Futhermore, these minor, more or less off-topic, sub-threads occurred:

3)  French/English spelling is weird.

    French spelling looks weirder and further away from its phonetic
    values, but is more consistent and predictable, than English.

4)  Acade'mie French is not actually spoken French, which has /e/ for
    classical /E/ in a number of situations.

    The French natives on this list seem to agree on this (mostly...
    "lait", anyone? ;-), so I accept that as a fact.  (Though their
    figure of 99.99% doesn't sound anywhere near realistic in my
    experience.)

5)  /E/ and /e/ are both tense cardinal vowels.

    As it has been pointed out, this is a fact, following straight out
    of the definition of "tense" and "lax".  My erroneous assumption
    that /E/ was inherently laxer than /e/ was based on the fact that
    the large majority of languages I know (a rather limited selection
    to begin with), foremost German and English, use /E/ in that sense.


All in all, there seems to be very little reason for a flame war.


-- Christian Thalmann (pronounced /kresten telmen/ in modern French ;-)

--
GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet.
http://www.gmx.net

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