Re: sending mail to the list

Christophe Grandsire sikayal:

> the one I am currently trying to master, and cannot manage to do so. Wait for
> another ten years and I may be able to master it :) . Then I will try to hear
> the difference between {u} in "put" and {oo} in "book", and maybe within twenty
> years I will have finally mastered all the vowels of English :) . Strange,
Bravo, Christophe, on your determination for learning other languages.
Isn't it odd how different languages have different tendencies to be
misheard?  French and English tend to be some of the hardest two to cross
between--I know French people who have learned English for longer than you
have and have the worst accents, to where they are nearly
incomprehensible.  I've heard the same complaint about English speakers of
French.

Anyway, I wrote to say (1) that both "put" and "book" have /U/ (the lax
sound), and (2) that it doesn't matter since the distinction between /u/
and /U/ may be gone in 20 years anyway.  Some words always have one or the
other; "put" always = /pUt/, and "boot" always = /but/, but a lot of words
have free variation between them.  Me and my friends argue over whether
"roof" is /rUf/ or /ruf/.  I think the distinction between those two
vowels is dying out, and it won't matter much anyway.

> thinking that it took me hardly more then two months to master the sound
> transcribed by {u} in Japanese (an unrounded "oo", like pronouncing "oo" with
> your lips straight as if you were pronouncing "ee"). This sound is as foreign to
> French as the lax sounds of English. I guess it must be the "lax" feature which
> is very difficult to master.
If it helps any, in most dialects of English that I hear /U/ is nearly
unrounded.  Therefore, if you can make [M] (high back unrounded) or [1],
either of those would make an acceptable approximation for /U/--still
slightly accented, but far better than using [u].

Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton

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