Re: USAGE: Voicing and aspiration (was: "Transferral" verb form ...)

En réponse à Tim May <butsuri@...>:

>  >
> So a Mandarin speaker would (be likely to) recognize a voiced stop as
> nonaspirated and vice-versa _even if the speaker were, say, Spanish,
> and not making any aspirational distinction_?  ie, they'd recognize
> [p] as /p_h/ and [b] as /p/?  I knew that the distinction was one of
> aspiration, and that the Pinyin lined up with English, but I hadn't
> considered how this worked with other languages.
>
Unfortunately it doesn't work that way and I know that by experience. Most
Mandarin speakers learning French have an extremely hard time learning to
differentiate voiceless and voiced stops. It takes them years to learn to
separate two words like "gateau" [gato]: cake and "cadeau" [cado]: present in
speech. I know that by experience, having had Chinese neighbours when I lived
in Paris.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.