Re: USAGE: syllables

MJR = Mark J. Reed (me)
JSB = JS Bangs

On Thu, Jun 12, 2003 at 01:58:30PM -0700, JS Bangs wrote:
MJR> My subjective experience in producing the sounds would lead me to say
MJR> that fricatives were more sonorous than nasals or liquids, and it's
MJR> difficult to rank the latter two at all; they seem about equivalent.

JSB> Eh? If a fricative is more sonorous than a nasal, then [nfip] should be
JSB> easier to pronounce than [fnip], which is false to me. Likewise, is [rma]
JSB> easier than [mra]?

Well, when you put it THAT way.  :)  I was trying to go by how much the air
was moving, which also maxes out in the vowels.

JSB> Individual exceptions apply, like English speakers who can say [sta] but
JSB> not [tsa].

It took some practice to learn to pronounce initial [ts], but now I find it
takes less effort than pronouncing [st].  Which would seem to support
your statement, not that it needed any more support, I'm just thinking
"out loud" here, so to type.

MJR> But what is Old Yivrian?  I've not heard of it.

JSB> The ancestor of Yivrian, my main conlang.

Oh!  When you said "discovered" (rather than, say, "decided") I leapt to
the conclusion that it must be a natlang, or at most someone else's conlang.
Silly me. :)

-Mark