Re: Futurese

>>If you want a language to be "as neutral as possible", you
>>shouldn't consider that much that there are languages "more
>>important" than others.
>
>But, that is precisely what you are doing!   By taking into account only
>these 317 languages are you not implying that they are 'more important'
>than the several hundreds other languages spoken on our planet?
Those 317 languages are supposed to be representatives
of the various language families.


>Also by apparently giving all these 317 languages equal weighting, are you
>not making the value judgment that they are all of "equal importance"?
>
>I did not say "more important" - please do *not* attribute value judgments
>to me which I did not make.  I'm speaking of _human beings_, the people who
>actually use language day by day.  I'm merely relating to the uncomfortable
>_fact_ that millions of more people speak certaon languages than speak
>others.
>
>I was under the impression that constructors of IALs aimed at the 'maximum
>ease' for the greatest number.  But I guess I've got that wrong also.
To believe in that it is possible to achieve a "maximum
ease for the greatest number" without making the IAL
biassed towards the linguistic habits of those languages
which happen to feature more speakers at the time of
its construction is as silly as to believe an IAL will
make people better.

And, OTOH, if e.g. you reduce the phoneme chart in order
to make the language supposedly "easier to pronounce for
the greatest number", you'll be causing the words of the
language to be lengthy and similar-looking. So IMHO it's
not a matter of "making it easier", but of "optimizing it";
i.e., don't make it too hard nor too apparently easy (because
"ease" in the realm of language means "hidden difficulties"),
but better keep it at an average level.


>>Haven't you notice Chinese DOES have a rhotic sound in their
>>inventory?
>
>Good grief!  Retroflex _vowels_ and apical trilled _consonants_ are not the
>same thing.  Simply to pluck the label "rhotic", which is a pretty vague
>term IMHO, out of the air and apply it to two different phenomena does not
>make them the same!
The vowel sound "er" of Chinese shares that "vibrant" quality
with the trill that makes both be referred to as "rhotic".


>>And, as I said, the trill would just be the "ideal"
>>pronounciation; for /r/ any rhotic (including that Chinese
>>"er") will do as long as you make clear the difference with
>>/l/ and /d/.
>
>Any rhotic?  Does that cover the Parisian uvular approximant, the trilled
>uvular still occasionally heardin France and found in parts of north Wales,
>e.g. and the Chinese sound denoted by {r} in Pinyin, i.e. [z`]?
It may cover the uvular approximant, because there's not
other phoneme interfering with it, but not the r of
Pinyin, because it would sound too much like /Z/.

Best regards,
Javier