Re: "y" and "r" (Uusisuom)

At 6:04 pm +0100 31/3/01, Daniel44 wrote:
>For the last and final time:
>
>'y' in Uusisuom is pronounced like the 'oo' sound in the word 'bOOt'.
>'u' in Uusisuom is pronounced like the 'oo' sound in the word 'fOOt'.
>
>Is that not clear enough for everyone?
That, I think, we've accepted.

>If someone here could help me with the phonetic symbols for those two
>sounds, I would be most grateful.
In "ASCII IPA" the OO in bOOT is [u], and the OO in fOOt is [U].  The
actual IPA symbol for the latter sound is a stylized version of Greek
upsilon.

[snip]
>
>PPS: I come from London, and my pronunciation of English is 'standard'.
Which should also silence speculation about whether you're Scots or
Lancastrian!
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At 1:32 pm -0500 31/3/01, Padraic Brown wrote:
>On Sat, 31 Mar 2001, Daniel44 wrote:
[snip]
>>Is that not clear enough for everyone?
>
[snip]
>Still doesn't help with uu and presumably yy, though.
But Daniel has already told us that there is no {yy} in Uusisuom.

I did raise the query what vowels can & canot be doubled in Uusisuom, but
have had no reply. I assume {uu} must indicate length; it's difficult to
see what else is meant, i.e. {uu} = [u:].

[snip]
>
>>PPS: I come from London, and my pronunciation of English is 'standard'.
A little unfair, I think.  Standard S.E. England English (RP) has been
pretty extensively described.
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At 8:56 pm +0100 31/3/01, And Rosta wrote:
>Ray:
[snip]
>
>> If I'm reading a description of a language and it tells me that a sound, X
>> (X = uninstantiated variable), is pronounced as X in Italian, it would not
>> occur to me to think: "Does s/he mean the way it's pronounced in Lombardy,
>> or is the Neapolitan sound or mayb the one they use in Sicily?"  I would
>> assume, and I guess most others would, that it'd be the way an educated
>> Italian speaking what most text books give as standard Italian.
>
>true. But this works better for Italian, because give or take a bit of
>variation in the mid vowels, standard Italian speakers tend to be in
>agreement on vowel realizations,
Firstly, X could be vowel or consonant.
Secondly, I wasn't referring to standard Italian speakers, but specifically
to regional accents.

I'm by no means an expert on Italian regional dialects, but I do understand
that northern dialects are not immediately comprehensible to southern
dialect speakers & vice-versa, i.e. there is a good deal of variation
within Italy.

If we assumed, as we now know is the case, that Daniel is referring to
standard Brit English, then similarly we almost as little problem as with
standard Italian speakers.

[snip]
>
>I don't know about Wales; I don't meet many Welsh people. In southern
>or at least southeastern England [u], except before nononset /l/, is
>rather unusual, I think. It occurs in posh-sounding Conservative RP
>and in Black London English, but not in 'Estuary'.
Well, there's a tendency not to round the vowel, but I haven't noticed much
fronting.  But Daniel did explicitly say that Uusisuom {u} was pronounced
with rounded lips.
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At 3:45 pm -0500 31/3/01, Nik Taylor wrote:
>Raymond Brown wrote:
>> I would
>> assume, and I guess most others would, that it'd be the way an educated
>> Italian speaking what most text books give as standard Italian.
>
>But there's no such standard in English.  There is such a standard if
>you're specifying British English, but American English has no such
>standard, it seems to have regional standards.  I'm not sure if
>Australian English has such a standard, but at any rate, there's
>definitely no standard for "World English".
 <sigh> I'm well aware that there is no such thing as standard World
English.  I have met people from New Zealand & Australia, and quite a few
from South Africa, and I hear Indian sub-continental English very often.  I
had, er, sort of noticed that there was no standard.

I was under the impression that there was some sort of notional "general
American", but I may be mistaken.  But there is certainly a notional
standard southern Brit English (even if, as And points out from time to
time, few actual adhere to it in its entirety).

I assume that if someone is defining sounds for a language, especially a
would-be auxlang, s/he is referring either to the the southern Brit or
'general American' (if it exists), and that if any other variety of English
was meant that this would be stated.

I certainly would not expect someone - and clearly Daniel hasn't done this
- to explain the sounds of an auxlang according to some Lowland Scots or
Lancastrian varieties.
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At 12:12 pm -0500 31/3/01, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
[snip]
>
>Much agreed.  Though "standard" might depend on where the non-native
>speaker comes from.  (South) Koreans invariably learn the "standard"
>*American*
>variant of English, maybe because of the fact that the U.S. 8th Army is
>plunked in their country.  Others are going to have something closer to
>"standard" British English.
This has certainly been my experience.  I have students from the far East
and Iran who speak with 'general American' accent.

>(I was going to say Hong Kong and India
>probably,
Hong Kong - probably, unless now adopting the American standard - but India
has developed its own, distinctive variety of English.

Ray.

=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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