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

Yep, I think the best I can do is to gather
information from Russian tranlitterating. In Russian
papers, you very often come across English / American
names written in cyrillic, in a phonetic way. So you
just read it in Russian, and than you know how it
should be pronouced (since Harrap's seems not to be a
reliable source). It's often about persons or places,
but often also usual words. I just read in a title:
"CZ - E - L - S - I"
so I know it's about Chelsea and that's the way
Chelsea sould be pronounced. "F - O - R - S - A - J -
T" means Forsythe. An so on. Very useful.

As to "u" in "cure", I used to pronounce "blood" like
it was "bleude" in French (like in "oeuf") (while
"floor" I pronounce rather like French "Nord"),
because I heard it so on self-teaching cassettes
(Assimil), but I'm sure that twelve conlangers
immediately and definitely will prove me that it's not
the way they do... Well, as I said, as long as we
exchange written messages, that doesn't matter in any
way. Maybe after all English should be a only-written
language.

--- Christophe Grandsire >
> To Philippe: you see, a native speaker think [U] is
> closer to the vowel in
> "oeuf" than the vowel in "coup". So for the native
> speaker, the difference
> between [u] and [U] is just as big as the difference
> between [u] and [9] is
> for us.
> ___________________
> En réponse à Philippe Caquant :
>
>
> >Can't understand that point about "cure". I always
> >pronounced it something like "kju:r", and my
> Harraps's
> >says someting similar. What has it to do with a
> nurse
> >?
>
> If you had truly read what Trebor wrote, you would
> have seen how he
> pronounces "cure": [kjr\=]. No [u] in there!
Aaargh ! I have not the faintest idea what "kjr\="
could mean. I think I will still pronounce "kju:r", or
maybe "kjuer", as I always did.

 And
> probably he pronounces
> "nurse" as [nr\=s] or something similar, so in his
> speech "cure" and
> "nurse" are assonant (i.e. they have the same vowel.
> Note that [r\=] is
> vocalic). That's what it has to do with "nurse". And
> stop hiding behind
> this dictionary. The Harrap's only presents word
> pronunciation in the
> "British Received Pronunciation", a sort of neutral
> British flavour which
> has an existence only in the mouth of teachers
> teaching English to
> non-English speakers. It doesn't say anything about
> the English spoken by
> most native speakers.>

=====
Philippe Caquant

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


	
		
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