Re: Pronouncing new sounds in new languages

Daniel44 wrote:
>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'.
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAK! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHH! OUCH!
[falling to my knees, banging my head in concrete floor]

{u} more TENSE than {y}? GAK!
From all your other explanations, I had gathered that {u} was more LAX than
{y}. [banging my head a littel more] And close to French {u}?!? French {u}
is [y], which to my ears (or rather my phoneme-handling part of the brain,
but what the) is vastly different from [U] and [u] (RP pronounciations of
the vowels in English "put" and "pool").

I'll just give up trying to pronounce Uusisuom, shall I? Let's start finally
learning Chinese instead - being tone-deaf can't be that much of a
disadvantage ...

                                                            Andreas

PS Don't take this as an insult, Daniel44. The whole mess is after-all
caused by the well-known difficulties in transcribing sounds by reference to
other lang's sounds. But I won't try to understand anything about Uusisuom
phonology until you've attained a firm command of IPA and X-SAMPA. Just in
order to keep my nerves intact.
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