Re: Announcement: New auxlang "Choton"

3 in 1

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 20:36:00 +0200, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
>Hi!
>
>I'd say there are two meanings:
[...]
>   b) a different German language/dialect (sorry for repeating the
>      same word in the definition)
>
>      This then refers to usually mutually intelligible variants of
>      German that have undergone different sound changes and and often
>      use different vocab.  It could often be said that those are
>      different languages, but that's not usually done, because they
>      are so intelligible and there is not political motivation to
>      distinguish them as a language.  However, Bavarian or Plattdeutsch
>      (both of which again occur in many variants) and some others
>      seem to be accepted as different languages.  Plattdeutsch is
>      closer to Dutch than NHG, for example.
>
>      This is the major usage of 'dialect'.
This is what I meant when speaking about "dialect". As I said, I never
learned speaking it.

>For myself, for example, I can say that I do not speak a local dialect
>(def. b) anymore, but my grandma did (the last generation who did).  I
>can understand it, however.  But I speak some variant of NHG (def. a),
>e.g. I lack some phonemic distinctions (seldom) and some phonetic
>distinctions (often) of NHG involving diphthongs in vocalic /r/ and
>there is no initial /pf/ affricate for me.  E.g. I have:
>
>  |Pfad|  /fa:d/ [fa:t]
>  |fad|   /fa:d/ [fa:t]
>  |Fahrt| /fart/ [fa:t]
The "no initial /pf/" at least one thing I can agree to.
No dropping "r"s for me though:

Pfad:  [fa:d]
fad:   [fa:d]
Fahrt: [fart]
Pferd: [ferd]


On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 14:39:32 -0400, J. 'Mach' Wust <j_mach_wust@...> wrote:
>You should use square brackets when you refer to the pronunciations, since
>slashes are used to refer to the phonemes. If I understand you correctly,
>then in your variety of standard German, the /e/ is [@] in reduced
>syllables, [e] when short and also [e:] when long?
Not quite: it's [e] in normal occurrencies, [@] (schwa) when short or
reduced (no difference), and [e:] when long.
This goes in accordance with the phonetics given in my dictionary, which
however sometimes deviates from this rule and e.g. gives "defekt" as
[defEkt] rather than [def@kt], as it should be.

Ende:   [end@]
Kante:  ['kant@]
kannte: ['kant@]
mehr:   [me:r]
nett:   [n@t]
Held:   [held]
hält:   [h{lt] (rather than [hElt]

>So the vowels of |Bett|
>(bed to sleep in) and |Beet| (bed to plant in) don't differ in quality (both
>having [e]) but only in quantity?
No. Like I said above, for short or reduced "e", [@] is used, thus:
Beet: [be:t]
Bett: [b@t]

>That's unlike the Siebs standard
>pronunciation, where |Bett| has [E] (the same sound the Siebs standard
>expects in the first syllables of |setze| and |Sätze|).
As I said, "Bett" is [b@t]. Besides, Sieb is really antiquated already,
being over 100 years old, so I wouldn't resort to it as a standard.

>Like that, the phonemic/phonological system of your variety of standard
>German is quite different from the one of the Siebs standard and of most
>other regions of the German speaking area (places as different as
>Switzerland or Lower Saxony (see e.g. an Osnabrück paper at
>http://tobiasthelen.de/schrift_ist_berechenbar.html ). That's remarkable!
Well, it's not too difficult being different from Sieb's standard, since
it's already over 100 years old.

To detail some words from your paper according to my pronunciation:

(1)<Wald>  [wald]
   <wallt> [walt]
(The difference between end-d and end-t is only very small and might
diappear sometimes.)

<Kante>, <kannte> ['kant@]
(no difference)

<Weise> ['vaIz@]
<Waise> ['vajz@]
(The difference between [aI] and [aj] is only very slight as well.)

<heute>, <Häute> ['hoIt@]
(no difference between "eu" and "äu")

<Rede>, <Reede> ['re:d@]
(both long "e")

(2)
<Held>  [held]
<hält>  [h{lt] (rather than [hElt])
<hellt> [h@lt]
<Feld>  [feld]
<fällt> [f{lt]
<Welt>  [welt]
<wellt> [w@lt]

(3)
<melt>, <mellt>  [melt]
<meld>, *<melld> [meld]
<mält>, <mällt>  [m{lt]
<mäld>, *<mälld> [m{ld]

(4)
<lache> ['lax@]  (imperative of "lachen", to laugh)
<Lache> ['la:xe] (puddle)

<Rast> ['rast] (rest, repose)
<rast> ['ra:st] (imperative of "rasen", to speed)

<Knie> ['kni:]  (Singular)
       ['kni?@] (Plural)

<Käschen> ['k{:s'C@n] (small cheese)
<käschen> ['k{'S@n] (capture)

(5) a.
<Kabel>  ['ka:b@l]
<Kamel>  [ka'me:l]
<Gamel>  (??? Never heard of a "Gamel"...)
<Gammel> [gam@l]
b.
<Befel>  (??? Never heard of a "Befel"...)
<Befehl> [b@'fe:l]


On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 20:54:46 +0200, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
>Reminds me; is it really [pf]? Since it's usually described as an
>affricate, I had assumed it's really [pp\] - which I find easier to
>pronounce, and in fact is what I use when speaking German - but _every_
>phonetic transcription I've seen seems to write [pf].
The sounds [p\] and [B] don't exist in German, neither by themselves nor in
affricatives. It is actually [pf], that's right.

--
Pascal A. Kramm, author of Choton
official Choton homepage:
http://www.choton.org

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