Re: YAEPT alert! [Re: Not phonetic but ___???]

Philippe Caquant scripsit:

> They are terrible. Just like children. Once they
> started, they cannot stop any more. If you follow
> things to the end, you'll finally find out that they
> are no two different words in English including the
> same sound, and not two places in the world where the
> sounds of English are alike. I wonder how they can
> understand each other.
That is a question which is answered by the field known as "phonology".  :-)

In fact, amazing distortions are possible if the context is sufficient.
There's a children's song in which the same line ("I like to eat
apples and bananas") is sung repeatedly, each time with all stressed
vowels changed to a single vowel, different each time.  Now if I said
['ai'laikt@'ait'aipl=z'aindb@nainaiz] out of context to someone,
I would still be understood, even though it's utterly unnatural.

> Well, I'm sorry, but I really can't hear any
> difference.
It's very hard to hear differences that one's native language does not
make.  My wife, for example, can't hear any difference between [flit] 'fleet'
and [flyt] in a context where 'fleet' makes sense; OTOH, she can't hear
any difference between [flut] 'flute' and [flyt] in a context where 'flute'
makes sense either.  So for her, [flyt] can be a valid token of either 'fleet'
or 'flute'.  For you, of course, the distinction between [flit], [flyt], and
[flut] would be easy to hear.

--
Do what you will,                       John Cowan
   this Life's a Fiction                jcowan@reutershealth.com
And is made up of                       http://www.reutershealth.com
   Contradiction.  --William Blake      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

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