Re: First Sound Recording of Asha'ille!

Mulit-comment reply to conserve posting limits...

Emaelivpeith Benct Philip Jonsson:
> Have you tried reading from an IPA transcription?  Doing that
> considerably improved my Slvanjec pronunciation.
I haven't tried that, actually, but it does sound like a good idea.
I'll have to try that and see if it helps me. Thanks for the
suggestion!

> I didn't hear any glottal stops (probably due to my lousy speakers)
> but picked up what I heard as emphatic sonorants which were rather cool!
There's *supposed* to be one in sentence #6, |lo'iyl|. Is there not?
Also, I thought emphatics were different from lengthened sounds, but
then I'm only a phonology amateur/beginner, so corrections and
explanations are welcome. :)

T'ves emaelivpeith René Uittenbogaard:
> Wow - the recordings sound awesome! :) I particularly like the [n:]
> (in line 1), [k_>] in line 6, and |mmavtec|.
Is my |k'| really an ejective? I thought ejectives were strange sounds
to be found in Semitic languages. I think of |k'| as a pure /k/ sound
(or perhaps an aspirated variant thereof). Phoneticians, correct me if
I'm wrong?

As for |mmavtec| (whose root morpheme is the verb |mmav|), it belongs
to a class of "stuttered words," of which there are currently 87 in my
online dictionary. All double consonants in the romanization of
Asha'ille represent such stuttered consonants (with the notable
exception of |-ille| /il/ and cousins, as in |Asha'ille|).

> To my Dutch ear, it does sound a bit American-accented, though not
> much. I guess that this impression comes largely from the [r\] (my ears
> being used to uvular [R\]), and a little bit from centralizing some
> vowels (like in line 2: |ashir| tends towards ['aS@r\], line 3:
> |Jhor'enasho| sounds as if it ends in [@], more so than in line 2).
Yeah, I have trouble pronouncing Asha'ille vowels -- especially |a|,
which I often say as [&] or [a] when it's always supposed to be [A].
And then, as Sally pointed out, I also tend to centralize them, which
I shouldn't be doing. (Do other natlangs' speakers tend to centralize
vowels in casual speech, or is that a peculiarity of American
English?)

> But even with the [r\], I think it sounds great, and I'd like to hear
> more of it :)
Thanks for the encouragement. :)

> I've been recording a couple of lines in Calénnawn, but the Asha'ille
> samples make me more reluctant to put them online - Calénnawn sounds
> harsh in my ears, and I have a very heavy Dutch accent when pronouncing
> it (probably this is to a large extent due to the uvular [R\] ).
Could very well be a case of you being your own worst critic. I'd like
to hear some of your Calénnawn recordings. :)

> Asha'ille sounds elegant and looks efficient.
Thank you. I'm curious, though, what you mean by it looking efficient?
Phonetically, grammatically? It's just that I hadn't designed
Asha'ille with efficiency as one of its explicit goals, so I'm
wondering where it has cropped up anyway. :)

> Nóbu! (Well done!)
A'jjha! (Thanks!)

T'ves emaelivpeith Philip Newton:
> The most "American" things I thought were the r\ and the r-colouring
> of the "o" in e.g. "jhor...". Other than that, it sounded Native
> American to me... like Navajo or something.
I noticed the r-coloring, too. I have a lot of trouble pronouncing
[Zor\] without coloring the [o]. :( Can other people say it without
the r-coloring? Is this just an artifact of being a rhotic English
speaker?

T'ves emaelivpeith Tim May:
> Why have you provided an IPA transcription of the morphemic breakdown
> rather than the sentences as uttered? (That is what's going on there,
> isn't it?)
Yes, that is what's going on. I have a script that generates the
webpage you see. All I give the script is the Asha'ille sentence (plus
morphemic boundary markings) and the free English translation, and the
program looks up all the other information from my dictionary. That's
why the IPA is based on the morphemes, rather than the surface forms
in the sentence. It's a drawback, but unless people really want to see
a "real" IPA trascription..?

T'ves emaelivpeith Sally Caves:
> In pronouncing this you are scrupulous to get the lengthened
> consonants in there, and that's what really gives it an exotic flavor.
> That's what I'm assuming the apostrophes after some consonants indicate,
> right?
Yes, that's what that particular apostrophe means. Apostrophes can
mean several different things in the romanization of Asha'ille,
however; it can also mean a glottal stop, a contraction, or a
contraction plus a lengthening.

> You might try making some
> of the vowels a little more tense, perhaps, if you're concerned about it
> sounding "American."  Or, shape the vowels somewhat differently.  I don't
> know.  I've experimented along these lines with Teonaht with some
> teeth-gritting resistance.
I'd like to play with the exact phonetic values of Asha'ille vowels,
but I'd have to do some more serious studying of phonetics first.

> Number 6 is your most exotic sounding passage.  The glottal stops and the
> "non-swallowed" consonants (what do you call those?  I can't remember the
> term--compare |k'| in this passage with |d| in  "krilorid") really make it
> sound foreign.
I'm not sure what the term is here, either. :/

> I notice an /S/ sound for initial |s| in so'no, and medial
> |s| in vesik'en.  But how is this /S/ different from the |sh| in n'asho,
> etc.?
|sh| is supposed to be /S/ and |s| /s/. Deviation from that is speaker
error. OTOH, I've considered making the "real" /S/ and /s/ be
pronounced with a rolled tongue, assuming that Cresaean tongues are
rolled normally and flattened only with conscious effort.

> Could you put the "entire text" in .mp3?
Oops! I wondered why someone had chosen to download all the mp3s
separately when all the ogg-people were pretty exclusively listening
to the full clip. :P The link exists now.


--
AA
http://arthaey.mine.nu:8080/

(Watch the Reply-To!)

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