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

On Sun, 1 Apr 2001, Raymond Brown wrote:

> 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:].
Ditto.  I looked at the doubled consonants and wondered about them too; I
think I've been treating them like doubled consonants in Japanese.

(This is terrible--if the sound-set and syllable-structure look remotely
compatible, I default to Japanese pronunciation.  Then again, after
starting French in middle school I went through a similar phase for
"unknown" words.)

> 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).
Beats me.  <wry g>  I *have* had people congratulate me on having "no
accent," but accent's such a vague term (and as a Korean-American friend
of mine, also a native speaker of English from birth or near-birth,
always wanted to respond, "Thank you--neither do you").

I've occasionally observed that if anything military people tend to have
a bit of Southern-ish drawl, but I may be drawing from a really skewed
sample.

> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> At 12:12 pm -0500 31/3/01, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> [snip]
> >
> >(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.
Ah.  You're right; I was thinking of an Indian math prof I have this
semester who does sound quite British to my uneducated ear, but most of
the other Indian English-speakers I've met do have a sort of, hmm,
up-and-down pitch lilt that's really kind of neat (except for the guy in
that math class who keeps muttering answers to the prof's questions too
low and too fast for anyone, including the prof, to actually hear what he
said--but that would be annoying in *any* language).

YHL