Re: Number

On Sun, 5 Aug 2001, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> <rueful look>  If [M] is the "upside down m" (rendered in
> Kirschenbaum as [u-]?) I liked it too, but there was something in my
> abortive attempt at taking a phonology/phonetics intro class that
> suggested the [M] was asymmetric and it *should* be [u].
> I stole it off Japanese...I did want to keep it.  <sigh>  Do you
> think the linguistics/phonology police might catch me if I changed it
> back...?
They might catch you, but they wouldn't be able to book you since there
are natlangs that way (as you mention, Japnese).

> I was trying to figure out how in the heck you would hear a [?]
> before a vowel <rueful look> since the prof for that class told us
> that technically when you say a vowel (without something else before
> it??) there's always a glottal stop, so if you said [qaItSaref] by
> itself, how would you know?  :-/
Believe me, you can hear the difference between glottal initial and vowel
initial. It isn't always easy, but it can be done, especially in
continuous speech. [...as ?a...] sounds different than [...as a...].

Marcus