Re: How to Make Chicken Cacciatore (was: phonetics by guesswork)

Quoting Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>:

> Please note that in grammars, you normally can read at
> least two examples in two different foreign languages
> about the pronunciation of Russian "x". That's why I
> mentioned "like j in navaja or like ch in Bach" (one
> might probably add Arabic examples too). But if
> somebody wants to learn Russian and you explain him
> that "x" is an uvular cacciatorive, ehm, I mean
> fricative, or an epiglottal bilabial thrill, you may
> be right (or not), but you usually won't help him to
> go one inch further. I haven't the faintest idea about
> what are such animals. When I listen to the word
> "uvular", it makes me think of wolves howling. I never
> howl when pronouncing "uspex", neither does my wife,
> and yet we understand each other when we pronounce
> this word, and Germans understand me when I pronounce
> "Bach". Strange, isn't it ?
The distinction here is what degree of precision is required. If we're trying to
discuss phonetics, we won't be coming far by refering to "English long a" or
"German ch". We're much better off using phonetic labels like "uvular" and/or
phonetic representations, like IPA or CXS. Anyone wanting to participitate in
such discussion ought to expend the fairly limited effort require to master
them, for his sake, and for the sake of the other people in the discussion.

If, OTOH, we're trying to get a linguistically naive reader to pronounce
something more-or-less recognizably, but without any need for anything like a
perfect native accent, we can't reasonably expect him to learn the IPA just for
this. References to more-or-less well-known sounds in more familiar languages
will be accessible to more people than an IPA transcript, and if the reader
ends up saying [tSaX] for what should be [cCAx] it's unlikely that it matters
very much. Chances are that the language in question doesn't contrast [tS] vs
[cC], [a] vs [A], and [X] vs [x] anyway.

If we're wanting to teach a linguistically naive person a foreign language to a
functional level, we'd preferably start with bringing him into contact with a
speaker of that language to begin with, and won't thus have to rely on written
descriptions at all for inflicting proper pronunciation upon him.

                                                 Andreas