Betreft: Re: Russian orthography (was: A perfect day ...)

>>> Christophe Grandsire <Christophe.Grandsire@...> 02/03 12:33  >>>
At 18:28 02/02/00 -0500, you wrote:
>distinguish palatalisation when followed by /j/.  That reminds me of the
>elusive difference between French "Louis" and "lui"...
>
>Strange, I had a discussion about it with my boyfriend just a few days ago.
>In his small booklet to use French in a few situations, they explained to
>pronounce the 'ui' as Dutch 'wie' and I didn't agree. But by comparing our
>pronunciations, we discovered that his 'w' was more like the semi-vowel of
>French in 'lui' than like the English 'w'. Does anyone know the exact
>phonological definition of this sound?

>Of course, he was also unable to make any difference between 'Louis' and
>'lui', whereas I find this difference as distinct as the difference between
>the semi-vowels /w/ and /j/.
What works for Dutch people is the following:
tell him to pronounce Louis as Loewie [luwi]
tell him to pronounce lui as lu-ie [lüi], but the ü very short, as a semi vowel.
This is what makes it difficult for Dutch spekaers I think, because we don't
have diphtongs that begin with a semi-vowel, but Frisians should have
no trouble with it, because they do have.


Rob