Re: Common Orcish Article (Long) - was Re: tolkien?

Quoting Roger Mills <romilly@...>:

> Andreas Johansson wrote:
> (Yargish, as it happens, does have
> > a pair of labiodental fricatives; unlike the normal situation in human
> speech,
> > they are typically pronounced with the lower teeth against the upper lip.)
> >
> GMTA!!!
I'm unfamiliar with that acronym, unfortunataly.

> That's how /f/ and /v/ are supposed to be pronounced in Kash; I
> guess they have a under-bite......but alternatively they can be bilabial
> (mainly for my benefit, so I don't dislocate my jaw.)
The Yargish, like any dice gods-fearing RPG/RTS Orcs, have massive lower jaws
and hefty underbites, whence the "reversed" labiodentals (is there any ready-
made terms to refer to the two kinds of labiodentals?). Myself, I do not, and
so substitute "normal" labiodentals. It's not like any human could pronounce
Yargish with a perfect accent anyway; our oral cavities are not of quite the
right shape, simply. I also tend to "cheat" with /J/ and /M/, substituting
[n_dj] and [u], but that's just laziness.

(For Meghean, I'm assuming the Elves' oral cavities are within the human range
of variation. Near as I can tell, about the only oddity about its phonology is
that it has mid-high vowels, but no mid-low ones, which apparently defies a
universal or two.)

                                                           Andreas

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