Re: Vowels?

At 03:02 PM 1/23/02 -0500, Steve Kramer wrote:
>My 8-year-old daughter has gotten the conlang bug.  She's also caught
>chicken pox...meaning that she has a lot of time at home to work on her
>language...
>
>Anyway, she would like to use "b" and other consonants as vowels.  My wife
>and I explained that she can't do that, technically, unless she changes
>the sound of the letter...so she asked, "Okay, what *is* a vowel, anyway?"
>
>Can anyone provide the textbook definition?
    Without reading anyone else's replies to date (and there are plenty of
them), I think your daughter may be better off using a "working definition"
than a "textbook definition."  That would be a little easier for an
8-year-old (however bright she may be) to handle.
    A good "working definition" of a vowel might be "The main part of a
syllable, which connects up to two consonants."  (Note that "zero" falls
into a subset of "up to two.")  If she can pronounce the proposed vowel
sound all by itself, and also pronounce it between two proposed consonants,
and make the whole thing sound like a single syllable in both cases, then
it can be OK as a vowel.
    As a general rule, the only consonants that should be allowed as vowels
are the trills and approximants (r, l, and their relatives).  If she can
figure out how to treat a fricative, nasal, or even plosive consonant as a
vowel and make it sound natural (even though I'd say the latter was
impossible), then more power to her.

---
Bob's Original Hero Stuff Page!  [Circle of HEROS member]
    http://www.angelfire.com/super2/bobgreenwade/original.htm
Music from Bob's Computer!  (CD now available!)
    http://mp3.com/BobsComputer
Want more hits to your web page?
    http://nomorehits.com/cgi-bin/start.cgi?referrer=bobgreenwade
    http://ads.clickthru.net/bannerlink?host=264157&ban=4

Replies