Re: THEORY: language and the brain [Interesting article]

Quoting Chris Bates <christopher.bates@...>:

> I've been thinking about it and I've found more examples of
> contrasting
> s and z than I expected, but I still think its a less important
> distinction than pronouncing T different from f and t, and D different
> from d or v. I'm often amazed that people can learn to speak english
> as
> well as they can, thinking of the number of new sounds speakers of
> some
> languages have to learn to distinguish. I think that english is
> probably
> very badly chosen as an international language given the large number
> of
> sounds it uses... I'm not sure what would be as acceptable and better
> though (after all, most people like english because they, or their
> teachers, think it will be useful for business purposes).
I think the first thing English needs is a human-readable orthography! :-)

But English's phonemic inventory isn't to terrible, is it? Sure, it's got [T]
and [D], and a messy vowel system, but it could be so much worse. It could've
had a couple dozen clicks, or full series of velarized and palatalized
consonants, four-way voicing and aspiration contrasts, or umpteen distinctive
contour tones with massive tone sandhi. Or all of that combined with Georgioid
consonant clusters and full complements of nasalized and creaky-voiced vowels.
And phonemic voiceless nasals.

                                                              Andreas

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