Re: Number

On Sun, 5 Aug 2001, daniel andreasson wrote:

> YHL wrote:
>
> > czu mehara [tSu meha*a] (using Kirschenbaum)
> ...snip...
> >  Nio na qaiczarev varaie.
> > [nio na xaItSaref varaIje]
>
> Wait a minute. Now I'm confused. Have you changed
> the pronunciation of Czevraqis? I thought {u} was
> [M] (which I liked *so* much) and {q} was [?].
<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].  Then again,
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...?

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?  :-/  The somewhat tentative fix for that
was to make {q} [?] between two vowels, [x] otherwise.  <looking
around hopefully>

YHL

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