Re: How to Make Chicken Cacciatore (was: phonetics by guesswork)
| From: | Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, July 21, 2004, 14:35 |
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Thanx for information. I'm afraid I'll have to decline
the invitation to pay 12$ to get sound files (my young
Internet culture having taught me that such vital
information should be widely broadcasted for free). I
had a look to the various charts, some of them I had
seen before, and this looks all very complicated, or
say, intricated. I'd like them to include more
pedagogical sense.
For ex, I would suggest that they would include at
least, say, 12 columns of examples, each of them being
reserved to one natlang: English, US English, French,
German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Hungarian,
Japanese etc. Then in every cell one would give 2 or 3
examples of that sound in that language, if possible
in different positions inside a word (ex: 'S' in
French: chimie, déchirer, hache), or expressly
mention: inexistant). So it would be easy to compare
different languages, and to notice which sounds look
specific to only one language. Here the examples seem
to be given at random. One could of course include
regional variants, for ex in French, the trill (if
that's the name) does not exist in Paris, but it does
in South-Western France. One just would have to add
(SW France) inside parentheses in the 'French' cell,
for ex.
Then another problem is that some sounds look very
clearly distinct from each other, while others don't
(and some seem to belong to only one language, ex:
Swedish, while including a very tiny specificity). I
found for ex a "half closed round vowel" against a
"half open round vowel" (???). (I don't deny that a
difference may exist, although I cannot guess it). So
I would suggest to make "families" of sounds, like
this:
.--- First o (definition; phonetic car.used; ex in
English, French...)
.--- Secund o (id)
'o' .--- Third o (id
.--- Fourth o (id)
.--- Fifth o (id)
This would give the same information as the present
charts, but shown in a much more readable way. And we
could easily differentiate between the widely common
sounds (ex: a, i, u) and the very specific ones (and
thus, for ex, concentrate on the ones we would have to
learn first, depending on our purpose). In the charts
I saw, every phoneme seems to have the same
importance, even the one that might be used only in
some parts of Scotland or Sweden, so one just gets
overwhelmed by number and peculiarities.
Of course, it would be quite understandable that
someone interested in phonetics of Asiatic, or
American first languages, would not be interested by
Swedish or Scottish (or French), so one should imagine
different grids for the (12) languages used for
examplification.
BTW, I may have bad eyes, but I couldn't find any
differentiation between English and French 'p' (like
in 'pound' # 'pondre') or 't' (like in 'to' # 'tout')
for ex. To me, the English consonants are much
stronger. Did I miss something ? Or does one have to
use diacritic signs ? But I was very happy to discover
that '2' is related to 'deux' and '9' to 'neuf'. If I
can't remember that, then I'm really unforgiveable. A
really great idea, as far as French people are
concerned !
--- Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 00:08:48 -0700, Philippe Caquant
> <herodote92@...> wrote:
> > where can I find a simple descriptions of all
> > these codes that would say, for ex:
> > - 2 is "eu" like in French "deux"
> > - %, or whatever, is "ä" like in Swedish "Gävle"
> > - etc, etc (with different examples from different
> > languages for each sound, if possible)
>
> I recommend that you learn which IPA character
> standards for which sound first.
>
> For example, obtain the CD or audiocassette "The
> sounds of the IPA",
> where each sound on the IPA chart is demonstrated by
> two linguists
> (except for one sound which is said twice by the
> same one ^^) -
>
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/cassette.htm .
> Alternatively, or
> in addition, have a look at "A Sound Reference to
> the IPA" (
>
http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/ipa/full/ ).
>
> Then transfer your knowledge of the IPA to either
> "traditional"
> X-SAMPA or to CXS (Conlang Extended SAMPA?); I've
> found a mapping
> chart to be very helpful for this, which
> superimposes the X-SAMPA or
> CXS codes on the IPA chart. Search for
> "xsamchart.gif" and
> "cxschart.gif" for this.
>
> (By the way, to answer your second question, I
> believe that the "ä" in
> Swedish "Gävle" is [E] - an open-mid, front,
> unrounded vowel, IPA
> "epsilon".)
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
>
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