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Re: CHAT: (no subject)

From:Luís Henrique <luisb@...>
Date:Friday, January 12, 2001, 15:37
Em resposta a Cristophe:

>Well, in French <un> is a single nasal vowel /9~/, so it >doesn't correspond to English u in but. What kind of sound are >you trying to describe?
I think I must reconsider my previous posting. Banin "a" may represent up to five different sounds in some dialects: 1)Stressed, not followed by n or m: like a in Castillian "madre"; 2)Stressed or not, followed by postvocalic n: as ã in Portuguese "mãe"; 3)Stressed, followed by non-postvocalic n or by m (which is never posvocalic): same as 2) in some dialects, as u in English "but" in other dialects; 4)Unstressed, not final, not followed by m or n: like a in Castillian "lacustre"; 5)Unstressed, final, or not final but followed by non-postvocalic n or by m: same as 4) in some dialects, as schva in other dialects. Postvocalic n always, in all dialects, is a sign for nasalisation of the previous vowels. In some dialects, it has no other effect; in others, it has a distinct sound, which could be /n/ before t, d, s, z, x, j; /m/ before p, b, f, v; and similar to English /ng/ in "thing" before q and g (velar stops). Postvocalic s gets sonorized if followed by sonorized consonants, or, when final, by vowel. Popular dialects may pronounce it, respectively, as /sh/ and /zh/, which is always considered lower-class pronunciation. As everybody has been discussing first names, I may add that their first names are always significant words, meaning things like: faith (Flora) truth (Zuzanis) simplicity (Ada) health (Sezonga) courage (Serena) faithfulness (Floris) straightforwardness (Adena) beauty (Robin) and so on. I don't speak any non-IE language, Christophe, so your inquire about what is surprising in IE languages doesn't fit me. But the first great surprise I had concerning foreign languages was when I learned that German and Italian didn't use -s endings to mark plural (in opposition to Portuguese, English, French and Castillian). You may call this my First Linguistic Universal To Be Broken! And, Tero, Ugric in Finno-Ugric is Hungarian. If you wish a flames war with Hungarian people, you may call the branch "the Fine and the Ugly" (yeach). Luís Henrique ___________________________________________________________ http://www.zipmail.com.br O e-mail que vai aonde você está.