Re: Announcement: New auxlang "Choton"

Hi!

"Pascal A. Kramm" <pkramm@...> writes:
> On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 08:25:15 -0000, Christian Thalmann <cinga@...> wrote:
> >...
> >the chart are both wrong.  Standard German short ä is /E/
> >and indistinguishable from short e in pronunciation,
> >while long ä is realized as either /E:/ or (more commonly
> >nowadays) /e:/.
>
> I disagree, it clearly IS distinguishable. An English speaker generally
> hears no difference between these two sounds, but that doesn't mean that
> there isn't one.
Christian knows German quite well...

> A good example here is the German word "Ärger" (engl. "anger"). Ith is given
> as /ErgEr/ in the dictionary,
Hmm, it should rather be /"Er.g@r/ phonemically and ["?E6.g6] phonetically.

> which is clearly wrong as there is a notable
> difference between the 'ä' and the 'e'.
The graphemes are different, but the phonemes are both /E/, just as
Christian said.

> The word is neither "Ärgär" nor "Erger", but "Ärger".
The last |e| in |Ärger| is /@/, of course, so that is different from /E/.

> Another example: Sanskrit ...
> ...
> A European speaker will generally hear no differerence between these two,
> but that still doesn't mean that there is no difference!
I can hear the difference quite easily.  This does not mean that |ä| and |e|
are different, though.

And I'm a native speaker of German, but there is no difference between

  |er hält| and |erhellt|, both have ...[hElt]
  |Sätze|   and |setze|,   both are ["zE.ts@]

Further, why do you think the spelling reform could change spellings
like |aufwendig| to |aufwändig|?  The reason is, that this is
phonemically equivalent.

**Henrik