Re: A prioi vs. A posteriori ?

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> En réponse à Tristan <kesuari@...>:
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BTW... do you want to check your email client's config? You seem to be
replacing one linebreak with three or four.

>> Hey! We have cardinal vowels: [i] (unstressed), [u] *and* [u:]
>> (before /l/), [e], [o]. All pretty cardinal
>
> Yeah, but you speak walk-on-your-head English.
Ahem. We work the right-way-around. You're all upside down. Haven't you
looked at any Egyptian maps? And _The Age_ (Melburnian newspaper) has
recently printed a map of Melbourne with the bay (south) at the top and
the nothern suburbs at the bottom. The way it *should* be.

> Approximately 1 billion people don't care about your pronunciation
> and have learned to speak an English which doesn't have those
> cardinal vowels ;)) .
Yes, well they're just fools that don't count.

>> (Note: nasal vowels don't trump diphthongs.
>
> Of course they do! Diphtongues... how vain... ;)))
I betcha more languages have diphthongs than nasal vowels.

>> What, you want us to choke on our Rs?
>
> If you pronounce them correctly uvular, there won't be a problem (or
> else you have a very curious throat configuration ;)) ).
Why would people use an uvular sound to represent the sound of choking
if it weren't because it sounds like choking?

>> If you want to kill yourselves, that's fine, just don't ask us to
>> join in (death by R).
>
> Well, the French population is still growing, so it seems we get
> along very well with our Rs (the Germans seem happy too ;)) ).
Your kidding, right? Even the Australian population is stagnating and
most of our growth is being done by immigrants, and we're less European
than Europe, for obvious reasons.

>> And use a *rhotic* for a *syllable nucleus*???
>
> Where did you see a syllable nucleus? I never wrote /R=/! "Alexandre"
>  is *three* syllables, not four! The ending /dR/ is a coda consonant
> cluster, not a separate syllable!!!!
Oh, okay. I didn't realise that. I guess that explains why that kind of
/R/ is borrowed as null in words like louvre /l0:v/, livre /l@iv/, hor
d'oeuvre /o:"d8:v/, rather than as /@/ like in just about every other
language. I thought it might've been the case, but wasn't certain.

>> You've got to be crazy!
>
> It's you who are crazy if you attempt to pronounce French with Rs as
> syllable nuclei! That just never happens! :))
I generally skip the pronunciation of French, not having been brought up
to pronounce a language where you have to choke to pronounce a sound
family that shouldn't even exist but before a vowel.

>> If /@/ was good enough for my father, it's good enough for me!
>
> How conservative ;)))) .
Now then, haven't others already been told off for calling people
conservative?

>> You French people need to learn how to talk properly.
>
> You rather need to listen to us properly ;))) .
What opportunity do I have? Even if I was watching SBS (Special
Broadcasting Service, the people who show most foreign-language stuff
hereabouts, but it's hardly their main _raison d'être_), I'd be paying
too much attention to the subtitles to hear a word of any French
programming they may have.

>> And anyway, pronouncing the words Frenchly wouldn't've helped any.
>> Speaking French, maybe, but who's going to do that in a world where
>> English is the dominant language?
>
> The currently growing group of anti-Americans? ;)))))
Well... I know that there's a reasonable amount of English monoglots in
at least one country with its own growing group of anti-Americans.

(Incidentally, rumor has it that if you can say something like (and my
French is non-existent) 'Allo, je suis australien. Parlez-vous
anglais?', you'll have a better time in France than if you tried saying
'Ja speak English?', partially because it shows you've been bothered
trying to know *some* French, but also because you aren't American. Is
this true?)

>> You should've worked harder to have Anglo-Norman continue. <--
>> conlang idea! Anglo-Norman becomes the dominant language in
>> England, but suffers all the same changes that English did from
>> that time onwards. Something to make Christophe cringe! French
>> spoken and written as if it were English!
>
> LOL! Being a Normand, I can tell you that the "pure" Normand language
>  is quite like that (we have quite a few diphtongues that didn't come
>  around in standard French :))) ).
Yeah, but something like /dZiz @str&ij@n. [do] v0: pa:lz &iNgl@iz/? (I
have no idea if that's how it'd be. Forgive me and make better
suggestions. And tell me what would most likely replace 'do'.)

> Indeed. The fact that they still have past tense helps consider them
> verbs too (even if the past tense of those words quickly loses its
> tense value). Anyway, in Amia, the auxiliaries did conjugate ;)) .
Hardly past tense. I've known of the term 'auxiliary verb' for longer
than I've known that 'could' is theoretically the past tense of 'can'.
(I guess if I'd learnt them in the opposite order, I might've realised
it sooner, though...)

> A cardinal sin I'd say! You should be ashamed of yourself! ;))))
I'll take my cues from someone else, I think (taking my life like a movie?).

Tristan.

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