Re: [wika] Boreanesian

At 13:23 18/05/00 +0200, you wrote:
>I found another conlanger in another mailing-list called
>WIKA. WIKA is a listed devoted to the discussion of Filipino
>languages. The discussion I'm forwarding below was originally
>posted at WIKA. But it has become more appropriate here at
>CONLANG. I have asked Andre Militante to join the group.
>Everyone, please welcome our newest Filipino member!
>
Well, I hope Andre has already joined the group to hear my warm welcome :)
. Anyway, welcome Andre! (Andre, it's a French first name you know. Do you
have any French ancestry?)

>
>There's also the conculture list. But I miss the more
>scientific discussion prevalent in conlang. When it was
>first created, I was hoping for discussions in
>anthropology. But now it seems to have been reduced to
>As-For-My-Conculture type discussions. How are the
>discussions at the anthropology egroups list?
>
Well, personally I would like to see anthropology discussions on
Conculture-l, but I'm not sure I could follow them, knowing nothing about
anthropology :) .

>>>>Yat has 7 vowels.  I'm just gonna describe it here
>>>>since I'm not familiar with a lot of linguistic
>>>>jargon.  1)  "a" like the Tagalog "a" ; 2) "ae" like
>>>>the sound in "cat" in english; 3) "e" like the Tagalog
>>>>"e" ; 4) "i" like the Tagalog "i" ; 5) "o" like the
>>>>Tagalog "o" but with lips spread widely ( I was about
>>>>to say that it sounds like the vowel sound in
>>>>"caught", but I just remembered that its pronounced
>>>>differently from English dialect to English dialect);
>>>>6) "u" like the Tagalog "u" ; and 7) "" much like "u"
>>>>but with lips spread widely.
>>
>>> That's not a lot of rounded vowels -- only vowel #6.
>>> Most natural
>>> languages have roughly as many rounded back vowels
>>> as unrounded
>>> front vowels. Otherwise, I love your liberal use of
>>> unrounded back
>>> vowels! I just can't get enough of them - which is
>>> probably why I
>>> like the sound of Mainland SEAsian languages and the
>>> Northern
>>> Philippine languages so much.
>>
Well, Japanese has only one rounded vowel IIRC (a, i, e and u are
unrounded, only o is rounded), so that's not that unnnatural. personnally I
like very much unrounded back vowels but they are nearly too difficult for
me to pronounce :) .

>>Thanks for saying that you love my liberal use of
>>unrounded back vowels.  In real life, I liberally use
>>unrounded vowels. I barely move my mouth when I speak
>>(this is true with whatever language I speak), so
>>since I said that Yatland should be a reflection of
>>me, the Yat language shouldn't have a lot of rounded
>>vowel sounds.  When I say the word "opo", many people
>>say that I sound much like "apa" because of the way I
>>spread my lips. Or when I say "ayun" I don't round my
>>lips.  It's definitely not a conscious act on my part
>>to speak this way, it's just me, my idiolect, my way
>>of speaking. Ever since I can remember, this is the
>>way I speak.  Funny thing, though, I'm the only one
>>who speaks this way in my family.
>
>That must be an American thing. Not many back vowels in
>American English dialects seem to have any rounding,
>especially the phonemically laxed ones in 'put' and
>'caught'.
>
Now I understand why I keep having an accent when i speak English. i round
all those back vowels (as for pronouncing them lax, it slowly becomes
easier... but very slowly :( ).

                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://rainbow.conlang.org
(ou : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepages/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html)