Re: Second report on Koni'

En réponse à Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>:

>
> Hehe. Never thought of that myself, but I like the theory.
> Of course there is a Standard Dutch (called ABN, "Algemeen Beschaafd
> Nederlands"), but Christophe and I regularly disagree about its
> interpretation.
> ;))
>
Hehe...

>
> I can't really be of any help here. I don't hear it, and my /v/ just
> sounds
> like /f/. If you would ask me, I would say tense-lax distinction has
> nothing to
> do with it.
The claim that there is a tense-lax distinction doesn't come from me, but from
Irina Rempt :)) . And I was under the impression that her speech was pretty
much "Standard Northern" ;)) .

 The only difference is that /v/ might be pronounced with
> slightly
> more voicing than [f], which is voiceless, but with much less voicing
> than [v].
>
Hence the IPA [v_0] that I used. Indeed I agree with you, but I do think that
this "slightly more voicing" would be a consequence of the laxness, rather than
the main feature (just like it's quite possible that the lowering of [I]
compared to [i] is a consequence of the laxness rather than a main feature).

>
> My impression (not that I know much about Ukrainian) is that [v\] could
> be a
> good candidate, indeed. But who am I?
>
Jan van Steenbergen? ;))))

> On a sidenote, I have always been under the assumption that "Ukrainian"
> is the
> only legitimate spelling in English. However, I have seen a lot of
> occurrences
> lately of "Ukranian". Could someone tell me if that is a valid option,
> too, and
> if not, why do I see it so often?
>
A quick Google showed about 112,000 hits for "Ukranian" and more than 2,150,000
for "Ukrainian". So I guess it's more a very common and repeated mistake than a
true valid option. The American Heritage Dictionary and the OED only
recognise "Ukrainian", for that matter, and another look with OneLook gives 16
online dictionaries with "Ukrainian", but only 9 with "Ukranian" (and all those
9 also have "Ukrainian"). Only one online dictionary gave "Ukranian"
specifically as a variant of "Ukrainian", and another one gives them different
parts of speech ("Ukranian" for the people, "Ukrainian" for the adjective of
nationality and the name of the language).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

It takes a straight mind to create a twisted conlang.

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