En réponse à Dan Sulani <dnsulani@...>:
>
> It gets even stranger, Christophe, as evidenced by the following
> [very bad] joke:
>
> Parent to child: What does T-O-O spell?
> Child: /tu/.
> Parent: And what is one plus one?
> Child: /tu/.
> Parent: And who wrote Tom Sawyer?
> Child: /twejn/.
> Parent: Now say it all together!
> Child: [obvious result! ;-) ]
> Parent: Very good! Tomorrow I'll teach
> you how to say "airplane"!
>
> [Now all together --- groan! :-) ]
>
Groan! Well, that must be the worst joke I ever heard in this century ;)))
(luckily for you, this century is still young ;)) ).
>
> Just thought I'd be pedantic and point out that it's no cliche.
Well, that it's true doesn't mean that it's not overused to the point of
cliche ;) .
> OTOH, it _is_ possible to produce them without teeth.
> I've even seen a (speech therapy documentary) movie
> where a man _without a tongue_ managed to make acceptable-
> sounding "sibilants" (to this day, I still can't understand how he did
> it!)
>
How can you achieve to pronounce *any* consonant (any speech sound for that
matter) without a tongue? I thought it was the main instrument of speech in the
mouth (nearly all speech sounds depend on a certain position of the tongue to
be pronounced correctly).
> The rest of the post was very fascinating!
>
Thanks!
Christophe.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.