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

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Tuesday, July 1, 2003, 15:07
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

Replies

Chris Bates <christopher.bates@...>
Ian Spackman <ianspackman@...>
Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>