Re: [IE conlangs]

Gary Shannon wrote:

> As a non-linguist, and especially a non-phonologist, I wonder at all the
> infinitesimal distinctions that are made concerning vowel sounds. English as
> spoken in London, New Jersey, Bombay, and by people with any one of a number
> of different "foreign" accents are all radically different in terms of the
> exact nature of the vowel sounds.  Yet each of these variations can be
> easily understood by most English speakers.  Such subtle nuances of
> pronunciation seem, therefore, to have exactly zero information content.
> (Other than to identify the nationality of the speaker.)
>
> English, at least, would appear to be very tolerant of variety in vowel
> sounds.  Are other languages this tolerant, or are there languages in which
> slight mispronunciations would confuse the meaning of a sentence?
It's not just vowels in English... a few consonants seems to tolerate avariety
of pronunciations with zero change in meaning.  For instance
we can understand someone who lisps.  We can understand Robert
DeNiro in _Analyze This_ although he says "analyze dis."  "R" is likewise fairly
flexible
 "Dat bad wabbit," says Elmer Fudd, and we can understand him.
I imagine this is true of almost every language.  However, certain
mispronunciations
are not tolerated:  as if, say, a person were to substitute "p" for "g":  Go pet
it,
when he meant "go get it."

>
>
> My own pet theory is that vowels sounds are important, but only just barely.
But as with the consonants, certain vowel substitutions in English are
fatal:Have you cleaned the sheets?  Have you cleaned the shits?  _Father of
the Bride_ had a completely hilarious character in it played by I've forgotten
who:  he had the most exaggerated unidentifiable accent where he pronounced
all his long "e"s /i/ as broad "a"s:  /@/  He was the caterer, so when they were

discussing what to order for the bridal banquet he would say the "chap chacken"
for the "cheap chicken."  Part of his funniness lay in the fact that you
couldn't
understand a word he said, although his gestures and facial expressions were
completely eloquent.

> (My own conlang, Tazhi, is set in a parallel world where it is a global
> language
> with many local variations in pronunciation which are all ultimately
> unimportant.)
>
> Anyway, the reason I bring all this up is that it seems to me that any
> candidate for a global language must be a some language which is extremely
> tolerant of various types of "mispronunciation".  How do languages other
> than English stack up in this regard?
>
> --Gary.
  I don't know.  Sally
scaves@frontiernet.net
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html