Re: OT: code-switching

En réponse à Mark J. Reed :


>Hm.  What about Swedish <a>?   How would you render that with precision?
>
>I remain convinced that the Spanish /a/ is the same vowel I have
>in my personal (non-RP) pronunciation of "father"; based on the
>above site, it lies somewhere between [a] and [A]. and could be rendered
>[a-], but I'm not convinced it's closer to [a] than [A]; maybe it's
>[A+].  At any rate, that is the vowel I use when speaking Spanish[*],
>and I was once (lo these many years ago before I forgot so much)
>mistaken for a native speaker by a native speaker.
>
>-Mark
>
>[*] For that matter, also when speaking German, French, Klingon, Russian,
>     Esperanto, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Japanese, Lojban, Latin,
>     Korean, Romanian, etc, etc, etc . . .
If you really use that vowel when speaking French, any French person would 
unmistakenly hear you're a foreigner. Until 20 years ago, French had a 
*phonemic* opposition between /a/ and /A/, and the one that survived is 
definitely /a/ pronounced [a] (very clearly a front vowel). Using a back 
vowel or something close to that in its place is easily noticed. Same with 
Spanish. In my opinion, Spanish's /a/ is very much fronted, and I can't 
really distinguish it from French /a/ (or from Dutch /a/ for that matter. 
And since Dutch does have a /a/ - /A/ opposition very much alive even 
today, its /a/ has to be very much fronted).

I think this native speaker mustn't have listened very carefully your 
speech, or your [A+] is much more fronted than you think it is.

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

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