Re: Two questions about Esperanto
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, July 15, 2004, 16:56 |
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On Thu, Jul 15, 2004 at 09:32:59AM -0700, Philippe Caquant wrote:
> I'm dubious about such descriptions as "place two
> fingers lightly across your mouth and say 'they' very
> carefully".
That's not a description of a phoneme. That's a way of getting
native English speakers, who are taught to regard [ej] as a single
sound, that it is really a diphthong.
> The best way to describe a phoneme, IMO
> (and if you have no sound file at hand), is to say,
> "like the sound '_' in the word '_' in natlang '_'.
That just begs the question "as pronounced by whom?"
Most natlangs have wide variance in the pronunciation of their phonemes,
as the endless YAEPTs on here demonstrate.
> To explain what is the Russian
> phoneme noted "x", you just say "it's the same as "j"
> in Spanish "navaja"
Whose Spanish? In some dialects |j| represents [C] or even [S], whereas
in other parts of the world [C]/[S] is represented by |ll| and/or |y|...
> or "ch" in German "Bach".
Well, AFAIK that is fairly universal.
-Marcos
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