Re: CHAT: Synesthesia and conlanging (was Re: The ConlangInstinct)
| From: | Grandsire, C.A. <grandsir@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, December 8, 1999, 8:47 |
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Don Blaheta wrote:
>
> This sounds pretty reasonable. Aside from the speed (I find French to
> be rather fast), my perceptions of French are almost exactly the reverse
> of each of these things. :) In particular, I've noticed that virtually
> every vowel is more clear, and I have to really think about it in order
> not to schwa unstressed vowels, or collapse all nasals into the same
> sound. I don't notice the consonants as being so different from
> English, though; like English, there is a tendency to voice intervocalic
> consonants, and of course French is famous for all the final consonants
> that have just disappeared from the spoken language (except in liaison,
> and sometimes even then). My best impression of French is run-together;
> I find it much harder in French to enunciate word-by-word as I might in
> English, because so many words just combine together with their
> neighbours. :)
>
That's a fair description I think. It's true that the most distinctive
feature of French is the phenomenon of liaison which is so widespread in
the language. I can understand that foreigners find it hard to
understand French because of that. Do someone know of any other language
besides French that has liaison also very widespread in the language?
> --
> -=-Don Blaheta-=-=-dpb@cs.brown.edu-=-=-<
http://www.cs.brown.edu/~dpb/>-=-
> The danger of confusion arising between sexual and grammatical gender
> is, in my experience, small, and confined to titles of books and
> conference papers such as "Gender", or "Marking of gender in Bongo Bongo
> pronominal clitics", and so on. --And Rosta