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

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Philippe Caquant <herodote92@Y...> wrote:

> - in French, there is an "open o" and a "closed o",
> although this very much depends of the area, of the
> social and cultural level, etc. But I cannot see any
> example where this distinction is relevant in meaning
> (I may be wrong) : so these are simply phones, as far
> as French is concerned. But in some other language,
> these could be phonemes.
Hmmm...  in my personal French, the open /O/ and close
/o/ are separate phonemes.  For example, the name
"Maude" /mod/ is distinct from "mode" /mOd/.



> - in French, there is an "open e" and a "closed e",
> and this is relevant in meaning: "sais" is something
> different from "ses", or "ces", so these are phonemes
> in French (and probably other languages).
Yes.

By the way, we had heated discussion about French /E/
vs. /e/ on this list a while ago.  Christophe Grandsire
claimed that "ai" was always pronounced [E] in French,
while I clearly use [e] in words like "baigner, saisir,
j'ai" etc.  On the other hand, he pronounces the ending
-et as [e] while I have [E].  In fact, my pronunciation
of "jet" and "j'ai" ([ZE] vs [Ze]) is exactly opposite
to his ([Ze] vs [ZE]).  I wonder what your take on this
matter is.



> So we could see at once that, ex, "mild th" exists in
> English and in Icelandic, but not in French; and "z"
> exists in English and in French, but not in Spanish;
> and yet, those phones being close to each other, if
> you use one instead of another in a particular
> language, it will not be catastrophic, people might
> understand you after all.
Yes, but in Conlanging, we usually want to explain to
each other how the language is *meant* to sound, not
how a Frenchman or Anglophone would horribly mangle it.
=P  The best option, of course, is to record a few MP3
samples and put them online together with the grammar.



> For example, the French will often pronounce English
> "the" as if it was "ze", while Germans will rather say
> "de"
Vell, ze stereotypical Cherman eccent uses "ze" es ze
definite article.  ;oP  German Swiss use "de", though.

Anyway, since /D/, /z/ and /d/ are separate phonemes in
English (/D/ is what you call a "mild th", a voiced
dental fricative), that can lead to misunderstandings.
For example, "breathe", "breeze" and "breed" mean three
different things.



-- Christian Thalmann

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