Re: Hail Mary

On Tue, 29 Nov 2005 12:48:11 -0000, caeruleancentaur
<caeruleancentaur@Y...> wrote:

>>wonderful experience.  I hope some day I can record some of my
>>Senjecan translations.  I don't yet know how to do that.
--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Carsten Becker <naranoieati@B...>
wrote:

>I hope so. Actually, I cannot imagine how to pronounce all those
>sounds like l_0 and r_0. I know now how to pronounce m_0, though.
I had an interesting experience with m_0.  I began Senjecan by using
a "w" for this phoneme, beause I wanted an unvoiced bilabial.  Then
I realized that the unvoiced phoneme also needed to be nasal.  So I
went to "w^" (U+0175), then to "m^," then to "µ," then to the Anglo-
Saxon wynn (U+01BF) (looks rather like a snooty "p"). But as I was
reading text, for some reason, I could never recognize the phoneme
from the grapheme I was using!  I finally went to the IPA "m with
hook" and voilà, that was the key.  Now I can breeze through a text
without faltering.  The grapheme looks like an "m" but with a bit of
a difference (U+0271).  Weird, huh?  The only drawback is that it is
not found in the Comic sans MS font which I like very much, so my
text is always sprinkled with Lucinda "m's."  The same problem
exists with "c with curl" (U+0255) and "z with curl" (U+0291) that I
use for /ts)/ and /dz)/ respectively.

I also had trouble learning j_0.  It sounds so much like an "h."  I
finally taught myself to form carefully the /j/ with my lips and
tongue, then move on to the vowel.  It sounds rather like an "h" but
the lips are in a different position, the position for /i/.  I have
read that some phoneticists consider "h" to be an unvoiced vowel.
The lips take the position of the vowel to follow.  When pronouncing
j_0 one must put the lips in the /j/ (/i/) position and exhale
voicelessly, then reform them to pronounce and voice the following
vowel.  I use "h with bar" for this phoneme to remind me of what it
sounds like and what it doesn't sound like.

I have written a history of the Senjecan orthography with dates and
places of the adoption of the various graphemes.  Unfortunately, I
can't present it to the list because so many of the graphemes are
not reproducible in the list.  And I use charts.

Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur