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

--- Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...> wrote:
>
> > Sure, this is all a lot of work
>
> Which you could avoid if you'd simply learn the
> terminology ...
I don't think it is possible. There is simply too much
of it, and 75% of it doesn't mean anything to me. What
could mean, for ex:

"This sound is made by bringing the walls of the
throat just below the tongue root and above the voice
box closer together, it ends up sounding like a strong
and raspy “h”." (pharyngeal, I believe ?) I tried and
felt like barking. Which language uses barking ?

And what could be "indeterminacy in French vowels" ?
I'm French and just cannot understand what it is
about. If there was an example, perhaps I could.
Besides, I suspect hat many of these sounds come from
African, or Asian, or American first languages, and
probably I never heard them in my life. It it was
mentioned "used in Bantu languages", or "used in
Algonquin", I would not lose my time on them, because
I would know that I'm not concerned, at least for the
moment.

On the other side, if I look for exotic sounds I've
heard, like African "gb" in "President Gbagbo" (a
nightmare for French reporters) or "kp" like in the
city name Atakpame (Togo), I don't know where to look.

I also can't understand why "R" (like in French "roi")
is considered as "voiced" (uvular fricative). To me,
this is a consonant, why should it be voiced ? (it is
often called "r grasseyé" in French, at least when
it's about Parisian pronunciation). And I wonder why
there seems to be so many particularities concerning
only Swedish: maybe because some Swede helped to work
the IPA out ? Why should there be more of such special
sounds in Swedish than in any other language ? Well,
to make it short, I just cannot get anywhere using
only scientific definitions.

> Here's a couple of websites you can use:
> http://www.languagegeek.com/roman/phonetics.html
> http://www.zompist.com/kitlong.html#sounds
I had a look...

> A few seconds on google would find you quite a few
> sites.
>
> If you use the French /t/
> word-initially, your listener is
> liable to mishear it as a /d/
I can't remember this happened to me. When I say "to
do", even with a French accent, there is quite a
difference between "t" and "d". What a French speaker
will probably miss is the melody of "do".



=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


	
		
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