Re: Announcement: New auxlang "Choton"

On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 17:48:30 +0200, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:

>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...
I know German very well either, thank you very much. I'm a native speaker.
Just look at my mail account: arcor.DE

>> A good example here is the German word "Ärger" (engl. "anger"). It 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.
If you follow the Ipa argumentation that fails to notice the difference,
then yes.

>> 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.
Then you are one of the few who can hear a difference. Most people fail to
notice it.

>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@]
I don't mean to be offensive or anything, but you should be concernerned
about your hearing if you hear no difference. In both examples, there's a
clear difference, even though some apparently fail to notice it. Just
because *you* don't hear a differnce, doesn't mean there isn't any.

>Further, why do you think the spelling reform could change spellings
>like |aufwendig| to |aufwändig|?  The reason is, that this is
>phonemically equivalent.
They are not. The German spelling reform is for the most part absolutely
BRAINDEAD (sorry, any other word would be insufficient). It was only changed
from "aufwending" to "aufwändig" because they thought that this way, it
would be easier to notice that it is derived from "Aufwand", and NOT because
they would be equivalent, which they are clearly NOT. Thus, it promotes
MISpronunciation, making it much more difficult for foreigners to pronounce
it properly.

For the non-German readers: please don't think that the German spelling
reform is universally accepted here, nothing could be farther from the
truth. There's a huge amount of Germans who are vehemently opposed to its
mostly insane rules. Recently, some magazines and newspapers even returned
to the pre-reform spelling because of this.

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