Re: sending mail to the list

En réponse à SuomenkieliMaa <suomenkieli@...>:

>
> I guess I can give you a very rough idea of how to say
> Vya:a:h properly.  (1) say English "view" but with the
> initial "i" sound, (2) say "rat" in a very New Yorkish
> "a" & draw it out, (3) expell a puff of air for the
> playful "h".  Voila!  Vya:a:h!
>
> Any better, Christophe??
>
Well, I'm gonna explain this once and for all: I am a native speaker of French
living in France! First, it means that most explanations that have to do with
how something is pronounced in a certain dialect of English are irrelevant with
me, as I don't know what you're talking about. Second, even if I understood the
explanation, the problem is not here. Whatever the explanation might be, even if
you pronounce the sounds at my ear, there are some sounds I cannot produce,
whether because I cannot tell them apart from other sounds I know (it's the case
with Uusisuom {y} and {u}, and Daniel can repeat as much as he wants that those
two sounds are very different, to me they are just the same, and it's not
because I don't want to hear the difference, but just because I cannot hear it.
A hardware problem if you want), or because I can tell them apart, when in
isolation (it's the case with the difference between the {a} in "rat" and the
{a} in "father"), but I cannot command my mouth to make such different sounds,
because it has not been trained in doing so.

To tell you how difficult it is for someone to learn sounds that don't exist in
their native tongues, I will explain something. I've been learning English for
about 13 years. Yet for the first ten years I didn't even know the {i} in "sit"
was pronounced differently from the {ee} in "feel", though during all this time
I listened to a lot of English speaking programs, songs, etc... I just heard the
same sound in the words "sit" and "feel"! The result was that for ten years I
wondered why my French-English dictionaries obstinately transcribed differently
in their phonetic transcriptions what sounded like one single sound to me. I
really became aware of the distinction when I joined the list and learned about
phonology and the IPA. Suddenly I realized what I had been overlooking for ten
years. Suddenly I began to hear the distinction, and trained myself to pronounce
it. Now I can pronounce it easily in isolation or in one isolated word. Still,
in everyday speech (and believe me, though I still live in France I use English
everyday), I still confuse the two sounds in my speech, to the extent that I
usually pronounce "bitch" like "beach" and "sit" like "seat". This problem
sometimes leads to misunderstandings between my boyfriend and me when we talk
together. Now comes the freaky part: in French standards, I am considered as
very good at learning languages, far better than most French people. In fact, by
French standards I'm considered bilingual French-English.

All this is to tell you that how different two sounds may seem to you, for
people speaking another native language those two sounds may sound like only
one, and this is not a problem of work, of dedication to learn a language
(believe me, I'm very dedicate when I learn languages), or a problem of
understanding explanations. To take a computer comparison, it's not a software
problem (you change the software and it works) but a hardware problem. My ears
have not been trained in my youth to differentiate the same sounds as you. My
mouth has not been trained to pronounce the same sounds as you, and changing
that can be very difficult. It took me ten years to separate the sounds in "sit"
and "feel". Now I'm working on the difference between the "a" in "rat" and the
"a" in father. I can now here the difference in isolation, but not in a flow of
words, and I cannot pronounce correctly the "a" of "rat", even in isolation. It
invariably comes out as the "a" in "father", although I know what sound I should
make, and I even know how to put my mouth to make it, I just don't manage to do
it! Now, I hope that Daniel will have understood that the two sounds transcribed
by {y} and {u} in Uusisuom may sound very different for him, but for some people
(actually, for more than 3/5 of the world population, and that's the lower
limit), they just sound the same, and that's it's no use claiming the contrary.
You cannot fight the truth.

As for the name of your conlang, Vya:a:h, as I've understood, the {y} stands for
the same sound as {u} in French "lune" (that's to say, kind of trying to
pronounce "ee", but with the lips rounded as if you pronounced "oo"), while the
{a:} stands for the same sound as {a} in "rat" and "cat". Well, the first sound
is not difficult for me, I have it in my native tongue. As for the second, it's
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,
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.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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