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Re: laterals (was: Pharingials, /l/ vs. /r/ in Southeast Asia)

From:Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>
Date:Friday, February 13, 2004, 12:22
On Fri, 13 Feb 2004, Isaac Penzev wrote:

> Great! [John's] encyclopaedism is amazing and more than useful! I'm very > glad there are such precedents in real life. I'll do sth similar in > Rumean. Just need to decide how to show [&]~[A] difference in Latin > spelling; Arabic is easy: fatha for [&], alif for [A]. Arabic script > is official, anyway...
John is, as ever, amazing.
> ------------------- > Tristan McLeay eskribiw: > > <<Okay. Russians seem more able to arbitrarily lengthen vowels when > singing > than Australians, then :)>> > > Abyssolutely!!! As much you lengthen Russian vowel, it won't change > the meaning :)))
Let me tell you that that feels bizarre :) At the very least you could have the common decency to finish your vowels slightly shorter :) Ah, how our native speech influences us so.
> You have a good ear! Many Russian native speakers get shocked when > they learn about [&] existing in Russian. Anyway, this is learnt > only at Philology classes in universities...
Well, I do speak a language that has a native /&/ phoneme. If I couldn't tell the difference between [&] and [a], I wouldn't be able to laugh at Dougy (just a random character) for saying 'Pizza Hat' on a Pizza Hut ad accidentally :)
> <<Some English borrowings look like that from my pespective... Some > words > borrowed with an [a] have the [a] become /a:/ if it's got the > primary > stress by the English rules and either /&/ or /a/ if it's > not.[...]>>> > > I don't think I understood you well,
Hmm... more simply, the Japanese word _kamikaze_ is Anglicised (IMD at least) as /k&m@ka:zi/ because in a nother edition of the language it was */,k&mI"kA:zI/, and J. /a/ was borrowed as /A:/ in the primary stress and /&/ in the secondary stress, but now whatever difference in stress there is is relatively irrelevant.
> but anyway what you say gives > another good precedent for splitting Spanish /a/ into [&] and [A], > that already constitute a phonemic opposition in Arabic words > (though I haven't yet found a minimal pair: hunting through a > dictionary is pretty hurting).
Yes indeed. -- Tristan.