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Re: Newbie says hi

From:Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Date:Saturday, November 2, 2002, 4:00
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 @io.com email password: thing till they were sure it would offend no body, \ "Subject: teamouse" / there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin

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Douglas Koller, Latin & French <latinfrench@...>