Re: Diving In...

En réponse à Almaran Dungeonmaster <dungeonmaster@...>:

>
> According to these pages the /r/ in english "wrong" and the /r/ in
> dutch
> "rand" are the same, but to me, they sound vastly different.
>
> Is there something wrong with my ears, or am I misunderstanding
> something?
Transcriptions between // are phonemic transcriptions. They don't really
represent the actual sounds but only the contrastive elements of the language's
phonology (the phonemes). So if a language has only one rhotic, whether it is a
trill, a flap, a fricative or an approximant (and whatever the place of
articulation), it's likely to be transcribed /r/. As for the actual
pronunciation (the phones), it's transcribed between [], and in this case you
have to descrive the actual sounds (which can sometimes be quite difficult,
especially with ASCII-IPA :) ). So as for the /r/ in English and Dutch, while
they are phonemically transcribed the same, they are phonetically transcribed
differently (the British English /r/ being more [r\], alveolar approximant, the
American English /r/ more [r\`], retroflex approximant, and the Dutch /r/ is
[4], alveolar flap - or tap -). French also has only one rhotic,
phonemically /r/ too, but phonetically /R/ (uvular fricative). On the other
hand, Spanish has two rhotics (the alveolar flap and the alveolar trill), and
thus must be transcribed phonemically differently (namely /4/ and /r/). But
then again, Spanish tends to pronounce two flaps in a row as a single trill, so
you also see the following phonemic transcription: /r/ for the flap, /rr/ for
the trill.

One mustn't mix phonemic and phonetic transcriptions. While phonetic
trancription tries to transcribe the exact pronunciation of a word, phonemic
transcription only shows the contrastive elements of speech (what the speakers
actually differentiate in their everyday speech), and phonemes are thus labels
describing an abstract entity, which can be realised in different ways
depending on the environment. For instance, in American English (not all
dialects, but the majority of them), the phoneme represented as /t/ is
pronounced like a dental (IIRC) aspirated voiceless stop [t_d_h] in a word
like 'tin', like a dental unaspirated voiceless stop [t_d] in a word
like 'stop', and like an alveolar flap [4] (or something near, maybe dental
[4_d]) in a word like 'writing'! (I apologize if I made mistakes) Still, in
phonemic transcription it will always be written /t/, since speakers consider
those three different realisations to be a unique element of their phonology.
And /t/ will be chosen instead of /t_h/ or whatever because of simplicity of
transcription and because in the English writing system the set of allophones
(different realisations of the same phoneme) is always written <t>
(transcription of the orthography of a language are between <>, though many
people like me prefer using apostrophes or quotes).

Okay, I hope I didn't confuse you more than you already were.

> As a matter of fact, I have problems with all the r and l sounds in
> the
> phonetic alphabet... is there anyone who can explain what all of them
> sound
> like?
>
Try the program IPA-Help someone posted the URL of, or the following page:
http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/ipa/full/
They both have sound files for the different IPA characters. They are very
practical, because they helped me understand how to produce non-pulmonic
consonnants like clicks and ejectives (I still have difficulties with the
implosives though :(, and my clicks are still clumsy). The program is better,
since it has also lots of actual examples in wordlists (very interesting, for
the first time I heard an actual word using clicks. Unfortunately, my ears are
not trained to hear them, so I have a hard time recognizing the clicks :(( ).

>
> Maarten van Beek
>
Did you receive my last private mails BTW? Since you didn't reply, I'm a little
worried, and I need to know if you received them correctly (my mail program
sometimes does strange things).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

Reply