History: funny sounds and phooey

Source of version: 2 (current)

A story told like by an idiot, full of funny sounds and phooey! ;:--Hyman Kaplan (by Leo Rosten) retelling ''Macbeth'' * What if Lojban had a "th" sound and not that glottal ''(velar, actually'') X. ** Can we say "glico-centric"? What tiny fraction of the planet can pronounce th? Greece, and some N Europeans (England, Iceland)...who else? ** ((Loglan)) has th, spelled ''q'', but doesn't allow it in native words: ''Qiydor'' = Theodore. It also has a high front rounded vowel spelled ''w'', as in ''wlframi'' = wolfram, tungsten. ** Lojban also has a loglan w. We spell it ''i''. Lojban vowels do not specify roundedness. *** Lojban has a th sound. It is written ' and while it is not the standard pronounciation at least two people (((kreig.daniyl.|me)) and ((pc))) use it. Thus, the name Katherine should be transliterated as ''kA'eren.'' rather than ''kAteren.'' - /T/ is not a stop, and transliterating it as one stops people from pronouncing the name correctly. - miqe. ((kreig.daniyl.)) **** You would last about 5 minutes at Logfest if you tried that "th" stunt. ***** The pronunciation police would take him out back and give him what-for? ****** ...Only to have me quote the book at them - /T/ is an "allowable variant" of ' - miqe. kreig.daniyl. * What if Lojban had a voiced velar fricative to go along with X (call it Q), and consonant clusters such as ''kx'' and ''gq'' were allowed. ** Too many people have trouble with voiced velar fricatives (''they sound like gagging'') ** This has not been a phoneme in any living language I know of since Sanskrit died out/evolved. *** But a quick browse through the linguistics section of a decent library would show you that plenty of living languages have a ''gh'' phoneme. Not meaning it as a putdown, but surely you realize that there are thousands of living languages... ((--And)) ** It is a phoneme in Irish, written ''dh'' or ''gh''; also in Arabic. ''I thought irish dh was a voiced th - a dental fricative, not a velar one.'' No, ((John Cowan|I)) mean ''Irish'', not Irish-accented English. ''I had been led to believe that it was equivalent to welsh ''dd'', which is a voiced dental fricative. I guess not.'' *** The voiced velar fricative is an /r/ allophone in some western Norwegian dialects ''and it's the realisation of /r/ in standard German, at least to ((pne|my)) ears'', and a /g/ allophone in Spanish. --((tsali)) **** So not a seperate phoneme. Plus the only native spanish speakers I have talked to have been in spain, where it is /x/ or /h/, depending on the region. - la ((kreig.daniyl.)) *** Are you talking about the voiced velar fricative or 'ng'? Isn't the former a phoneme in Arabic? {cein} **** The former. I don't know, I don't speak Arabic. ** Voiced velar fricative is also a phone in Modern Greek (spelled 'gamma' before back vowels)... though since ''g'' has allophones ''voiced velar fricative'' before back vowels and ''voiced palatal approximant'' before front vowels, I suppose you could quibble as to which is the underlying phoneme. ** Can we at least make gh an allowable variant of x? * How about a 'ng' for that matter? {cein} ** See ((ng rant)) ** As for ng, try pronouncing a /nk/ without it becoming /Nk/. Now try /Nt/ that isn't secretly /nt/. *** That's exactly my point. I think we agree. Same goes for m/mp. Why include m and n but not ng just because it's not commonly a phoneme? {cein} **** It is commonly a phoneme (English, Chinese), but I at least can pronounce both m and n in ALL the contexts where I can pronounce either. ***** ''ki'a'' ****** It is possible to pronounce both /amta/ and /anta/, or /ampa/ and /anta/ - but it is very difficult to say /aNta/ and almost impossible to say /aNpa/. ''I have no difficulty doing so... Actually IPA has the simultaneous (or quick succession) k-p in it's tables. --mi'e greg'' ******* /amta/=/ampta/, /anpa/=/antpa/,/aNta/=/aNkta/. /mp/, /nt/, and /Nk/ are indivisible. {cein} ******* Ah, intrusive stops. They occur in a lot of environments (like the p in "warm__p__th" and "ham__p__ster" or the d in "sin__d__cerely"), in some people's mouths. I know I can say /amta/ and /anpa/ and /aNta/ without them. Me, I can't see how to do /pm/ without either a buffer vowel or nasal release (which isn't a specified phoneme in Lojban). Intrusive stops have to do with spreading the "stopness" of the nasal onto the adjacent continuent (yes, nasals are considered stops, because __oral__ airflow is blocked). ****** Sure. They're phonemes in languages like Okpe, Igbo, Yoruba, etc. I think Igbo actually has consonant clusters of gb-b etc. * What if ((Gua\spi))/welsh/others? ''y'', a lax i, were an allowed variant of lojban y or of i? ** The ''i'' sound as in ''"hit"'' is used optionally in between consecutive consonants. "c-mavo", where the - represents this sound, is an alternative pronunciation of "cmavo". ** Any non-lojban vowel can be used for this. When I need one, I use the ''u'' sound in ''"put"''. *** I think the ''put'' vowel sounds too much like ''y'' (unless i just don't know how to pronounce ''y'') for this use to be unambiguous. This especially since ''y'' is never stressed and therefore is more condusive to alternate pronunciations. {cein} *** Since the buffer vowel is a lojban vowel, its definition as "any vowel other than the six others" is rather crazy. All the same, I grit my teeth and use [[y] (of e.g. French ''tu''): ''zmadu'' = [[zymadu]. I'd have preferred that schwa be the buffer vowel and [[y] be the realization of /y/. --((And)) **** [[y] is a valid pronunciation for the letter ''i''. [[zymadu] should be interpreted as ''zi ma du''. ***** We are not discussing the front high rounded vowel here, but the unrounded high lax front vowels, spelled as y in guaspi and welsh (though the welsh y can also be like our y), I in Klingon, î in Verdurian, i in English (in this sentence, the words pronounced with this sound would be discussing, Klingon, English, in, this, with, it, and is). It is generally accepted by everyone that (rounded i) is a variant of i, and (rounded e) is a variant of e I will not refer to IPA /y/, as different ascizations of IPA disagree on what this means, but I am assuming that you have gone with the one in the online Refgram, which interprets it as (rounded i) - and if this is what you mean, then you are right, it is an i. The vowel in 'fish', however, is not actually a legal Lojban vowel, though some allowed pronunciations of e get close. The question is why not, when all vowels except i have their lax forms as variants. - mi'e ((kreig.daniyl.))