Re: Newbie says hi
| From: | Herman Miller <hmiller@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, November 2, 2002, 4:00 |
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On Thu, 31 Oct 2002 22:34:30 -0600, Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>
wrote:
>Mat McVeagh wrote:
>> we need to learn from the example of Schleyer who created Volapük without an
>> R, replacing all R's with L's, because the Chinese don't have an R - only to
>> find that the Chinese DO have an R :).
Schleyer probably just didn't think of the Chinese [z`] and the German [R\]
as being the same sound. Isn't the romanization for the Chinese sound
written "r" in Pinyin something like "j" in Wade-Giles?
>And yet still gave it front rounded vowels, which are a problem for
>speakers of most langs, including major ones like English and Spanish.
>:-)
Not to mention the "v", which isn't in Chinese or Arabic, and isn't a
distinct phoneme in Spanish. Actually, come to think of it, four out of the
seven sounds in the name "Volapük" are foreign to Arabic!
Of course, speakers of languages without [v] could use [v\] or [w] for
Volapük's {v} and probably still be understood. Speakers of languages with
only five (or fewer) vowels would have a harder time dealing with Volapük's
{ö} and {ü}.
--
languages of Azir------> ---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/lang/index.html>---
hmiller (Herman Miller) "If all Printers were determin'd not to print any
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