Re: Pronouncing new sounds in new languages

On Wed, 2 May 2001, Daniel44 wrote:

>It amuses me that a lot of the people who are opposed to IALs are those same
>people who argue that English should be universally accepted as the
>international language. But as Christophe has already pointed out, after
>more than 10 years of study, he still finds certain basic words in English
>difficult to pronounce. Now if English, with its various flaws,
>irregularities, strange sounds (and yet as many as 1-1.5 billion speakers
>worldwide) can be suggested as an IAL, why not the vastly simpler and
>regular Uusisuom?
Simply this: one and a half billion people are already speaking
English. You may certainly suggest your conlang as an IAL candidate.
There's even a mailing list for you do just that. I'd invite you to
take it there.

>My French is not perfect, but I think the 'y' sound in Uusisuom is very
>similar to the 'u' sound in the word 'lune'. I also realised yesterday that
>the 'u' sound in Uusisuom is very similar to the 'u' in the Italian word
>'pUnto'. In short, the 'u' sound is shorter and more 'tense' than the 'y'.
Then please learn how to apply the IPA to your own speech and to how
you want your conlang to sound. Leftpondianly, the {u} in "put" is
quite different from the {u} in Italian "punto". The latter is more
like the {oo} of "boot".

>
>I'm planning to record some Uusisuom and put it up as sound files on the
>net. Hopefully this will be a great help to learners of the language.
It certainly will, as it's clear that you're basing this IAL's
phonology on your own pronunciation.

>
>Finally, even if 'only' 2/5 of the world's population are
>comfortable/confident to learn Uusisuom, that still means up to 2.4 billion
>speakers of Uusisuom (wow!)
A bit cocky for a newcommer IAL that isn't even done yet. But on the
other hand, you've got the radical Auxlang Politics down pat. Come
back when you've even a tithe of Esperanto's speaking population. No.
Better yet, take it back to Auxlang. Well, what do I care? I've gotten
the filters to function properly, so this shouldn't be much of a
problem.

Padraic.

>Daniel