Re: CONLANG Digest - 8 May

At 09:33 11/05/00 -0500, you wrote:
>On Second Carbon of Tenderness, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>
>        Nik had written
>> >
>> >But _tsar_ is always pronounced /zar/, at least by everyone *I've* ever
>> >heard.
>> >
>>
>> You pronounce _tsar_ /zar/? And my boyfriend that said that we mangle all
>> foreign words when we adopt them in French... What I find strange is that
>> you have no problem with affricates like /tS/ and /dZ/, but you cannot
>> handle affricates like /ts/ and /dz/ (or even /gz/ like Xena /Zina/ that
>> we
>> pronounce in French /gzena/). Do you have an explanation for that?
>>
>I don't thing the problem is in pronouncing sorts of sounds but in pronounce
>alien sounds for your language.  For me it is difficult produce a phonemic
>/z/ because [z] only appears as a voiced /s/ (in my dialect only before some
>voiced consonants, like in _mismo_ [mizmo]).  Also I have affricate /tS/
>(which could be released as [tC] or even [cC]) but no voiced counterpart
>(except as realization for /j\/ as [dj\] or [dZ], but it seams not to be
>phonemic).  This means that if I was an Spanish monoglote (or even when I
>pronounce foraign words when speaking in Spanish), I will pronounce no /z/,
>/dZ/, /dz/, /v/, my unvoiced stops will be unaspirated and my voiced stops
>will become fricative.  Even if I can pronounce them, I will not pronounce
>them when speaking in Spanish, because they are alien sounds.
>
Very true, but in this case, English has both /t/ and /s/, and you find
/ts/ itself in other places in words. So why should it be impossible in
front of words. I say that because, for instance, in French we don't have
native words with /tS/ (except the onomatopeia 'atchoum !'), but we have no
problem pronouncing /tS/, even when it appears in front of words. It's the
same with /ts/, which doesn't exist in French, especially in front of
words. Yet we borrowed 'tsar' as /tsar/.

                                                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)