Re: Dublex/Katanda hybrid

>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?
I've never liked the idea of confusing full vowels
with glides, even though that's what my own language
does to a hard-to-believe extent--Spanish "sinalefa"
creates "monstrous" vowel glides such "oao", "ieia"
"uoai", "ieiou", etc. which you should master how
to pronounce if you want your speech to sound like
Spanish; :-) we, native speakers, pronounce them every
minute without even noticing they're there, just like
English speakers pronounce amazing consonant clusters
without even noticing it (think of "staRTS STRongly",
"ploNKeD Down", "caN'T TRy", "woulDN'T CLaim"...).


>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.
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".


>or an overly difficult consonant cluster.
Which consonant clusters are supposed to be "overtly
difficult"? Is "kn-" difficult? Certainly not for
Germans and Slavic people, but certainly yes for an
English speaker. Is "st-" difficult? Certainly not
for an English speaker, but certainly yes for a
Spanish speaker. Is "pl-" difficult? Certainly not
for any of the above mentioned people, but certainly
yes for a Japanese. Etc...

Cheers,
Javier

Replies