Re: Dublex/Katanda hybrid

At 4:49 am -0400 17/5/02, Javier BF wrote:
>>Consonants and vowels are pronounced like their IPA equivalents
>>unless indicated otherwise.  They appear freely in the
>>three basic morph types as shown except /q/ may not start
>>a morpheme. In diphthongs, /i/ and /u/ become glides; vowel
>>pairs such as /ae/ are rendered as two syllables with any
>>glottal consonant.
>
>And why not as a "ae" diphthong, such as that of Latin?
But, conventionally at least, classical Latin {ae} is pronounced [aj]
(unless adopting the later medieval [e]).   In Welsh, e.g. /ae/ and /ai/
are pronounced differently, but anglophones certainly find it difficult to
keep such a distinction.

[snip]
>
>
>>An unwritten buffering schwa occurs
>>between words that would otherwise yield a geminate
>
>I've always wondered why in English-language lists
>there's kind of a general consensus about geminates
>being "difficult". I don't think any Finnish or Italian
>speaker would see anything difficult in them at all.
Ah - something I agree with Javier over!  Count me out of the "general
consensus".  IMO it's merely anglophonic linguistic laziness.  Not only
does not Finn or Italian see anything difficult, this life-long English
also sees nothing difficult.  I quite like geminate consonants.

It occurs to me that Spanish doesn't have them either. Do Spaniards have
the same apparent aversion to them as English speakers?
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At 9:25 am -0400 17/5/02, John Cowan wrote:
>Javier BF scripsit:
[snip]
>> And neither English speakers themselves seem to have
>> problems with geminates when they remain unaware of
>> being pronouncing them, such as in "night train" or
>> "whole land", which don't sound the same as
>> "night rain" and "whole and".
>
>Actually, this distinction is not one of gemination.
It certainly isn't.

>In "night train",
>the /t/ is pronounced with aspiration, i.e. as an initial, and the
>final /t/ remains only to the extent that it keeps the preceding diphthong
>short (as opposed to "nigh train", where it is long).  In "night rain",
>the /t/ is pronounced as a final, i.e. typically with a glottal stop.
Almost always as a glottal stop by younger generations in Britain - and
even old timers like me do not use the same sound for syllable final /t/ as
the aspirated syllable initial [t_h]

>
>As for "whole land" and "whole and", "and" is pronounced /@n/ unless
>special stress is placed on it, so here again there is no real question
>of phonetic or phonological gemination.
..and, of course, the syllable final "dark-l" is quite a different sound
from the 'light-l' at the beginning of 'land' in practically all versions
of English (I think the only exceptions occur in some Irish English
dialects); the dark-l tends towards [w] and, in London and much of the
south-east of England has actually become [w] in collquial speech.  I think
this sound change is known in some other Englishes (Oz??).

Ray.

=======================================================
The median nature of language is an epistemological
commonplace.  So is the fact that every general
statement worth making about language invites a
counter-statement or antithesis.
                                 GEORGE STEINER.
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