Re: R: Re: R: Re: R: Re: /H/ (was: An Unknown Conlang)

Mangiat wrote:

> Indeed I've had a difficult time, about 2 yrs ago, distinguishing the two
> sounds! The problem was that in my dialect they're not allophones, and that
> in its usual spelling /s/ is written s, /z/ is written s+acute, /ts/ is
> written z and /dz/ z*acute (but there is another spelling that works this
> way: /s/ ss, /z/ s, /ts/ zz, /dz/ z)  Is it always so difficult for native
> speakers to distinguish allophones?
No, not necessarily.  All children are actually born with the ability
to distinguish all possible phones, but they lose this ability some
several months after birth as they acclimatize to their speech
environment. This latent ability could however be preserved in a few
individuals who have the phonetic equivalent of perfect pitch.  Indeed,
analogously, people who speak languages which employ tonal phonemic
contrasts essentially all have perfect pitch.

======================================
Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
======================================