Re: A prioi vs. A posteriori ?

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> En réponse à Tristan <kesuari@...>:
>> To make it hard for English-speakers to prononuce properly?
> That must be it! ;))) Or maybe I had this strange idea that all
> *normal* people would find it easier to pronounce final [e] than
> final [i] ;))) . I guess I'm right there ;)))) .
Actually, I think I have to agree with you ( :P ). [i] only likes to be
in unstressed syllables, but [e:] is will be perfectly happy in both
stressed and unstressed syllables, /eniwe:/ in the word.

>> [1]: I realise it has historical validities, and probably present
>> ones in Other Dialects (but there's no need to confirm that). It
>> just sounds really bad when 'ay' is /&i/.
>
> LOL. If only you English-speaking people could be a little more
> sensible and have cardinal vowels in your sound inventory ;)))) .
Hey! We have cardinal vowels: [i] (unstressed), [u] *and* [u:] (before
/l/), [e], [o]. All pretty cardinal (I don't know how exactly cardinal,
but I doubt there's any language with perfectly cardinal vowels). It's
hardly my fault if we were a bit more adventurous with what we did with
open vowels... And not only have we short *and* long vowels, but we also
have diphthongs! Beat that! (Note: nasal vowels don't trump diphthongs.
Nor even nasal vowels in conjunction with diphthongs. Indeed, nasal
vowels are something of a liability. Front roundeds do, but we're
getting there: give us time.)

Really, the fault is that there's enough education gone round that
people forget that words don't need to be borrowed the way they think
they do. If you pronounce <au> in French words (recently) borrowed into
English with [o:], you're illiterate, unless you use a French accent,
when not only is it okay, but [8u] would be considered illiterate.

>> *Silent -r, but my sister when we were really young (before I was
>> in school) thought it was the feminine and /&lIgz&:ndr@/ was the
>> masculine.
>
> If you pronounced the words correctly, there wouldn't be such a
> problem. My sister's first name is /alEksa~"dRa/, and the /a/
> definitely indicates feminine gender (the masculine is /alEksa~dR/ :)
>  ).
What, you want us to choke on our Rs? If you want to kill yourselves,
that's fine, just don't ask us to join in (death by R). And use a
*rhotic* for a *syllable nucleus*??? You've got to be crazy! If /@/ was
good enough for my father, it's good enough for me! You French people
need to learn how to talk properly.

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? 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!

>> Are these those things like 'to call off'? Other than the Germanic
>>  languages, what languages do them?
>
> No, I meant plenty of auxiliaries like "can, may, will, do, etc..."
> used quasi-mandatorily at every tense but the present tense.
One thing I've always wondered is why those things are called verbs. I
mean, sure a few of them inflect (do, be, have---but half the time, the
latter two at least are clitics) but most of them are as uninflectable
as 'in'. Just an historical oddity because they come from verbs?

>> What was the date? How old a message am I replying to? :)
>
> It was from last week IIRC :) .
Oh, well that's boring... I simply haven't been paying attention to
everything...

Tristan.

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