Re: CONLANG Digest - 8 May

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.

> Just wondering...
>
>                                                 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)