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

On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 22:05:24 +1000, Tristan Mc Leay <kesuari@...>
wrote:

>J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:48:47 +1000, Tristan Mc Leay <kesuari@...>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>The original IPA vowels, though, were defined based on
>>>the cardinal vowels, which were in turn based on the French vowels IIRC.
>>>Since then, additional (central) vowels have been added. I have no idea
>>>when [&] (a-e ligature), [I] or [U] (small caps I and U) were added, but
>>>I suppose it was early on for English.)
>>
>>According to this, you'd have to learn a number of different languages (in
>>their most conservative pronunciations!) until you'd master the IPA
>>vowels, at least French and English.
>
>No-no, I meant in the first place. I imagine that French vowels aren't
>exactly standardised.
They are much more standardized than English. For what I know, there's a
common agreement on which way of pronouncing French is the right way.

>>========================================
>>
>>On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 00:13:49 +0100, And Rosta <a.rosta@...> wrote:
>>
>>>I presume the CVs ought to be definable in terms of relative formant
>>>values, though if such a definition exists it is surprisingly elusive.
>>
>>The [s]cientific approach. My few experience with these kind of analysis
>>tells me that it'd be extremely difficult to find the discriminations that
>>are even difficult to hear, e.g. between [2] and [Y]. Also a third-rate.
>
>Well, whether a distinction is easy to hear or not depends on your
>experiences.
If by 'experiences' you mean 'languages you know', then I fully agree.

>I find [e] and [I] pretty obvious, but [I] and [i] is beyond me...
:) To me, [I] and [i] is pretty obvious, whereas the difference between [I]
and a French or German /e/ is beyond me. Of course, the sign of [e] could
rather represent the vowel of English <pet> (which I perceive clearly
different from [I] and from [E]), but then, French or German /e/ would have
to be represented with [I] if we don't want to use the sign [e] for two
different sounds.

>(Babies can distinguish thousands of sounds. One aspect
>of learning your first language(s) is *losing* the ability to
>distinguish between them!)
The babies' ability to distinguish doesn't surprise me much. What surprises
me is the speakers inability to distinguish. I suppose that the same tests
as with the babies were made with grown up speakers, too?

g_0ry@_ˆs:
j. 'mach' wust

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