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There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Soleil
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Question about word-initial velar nasal
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: USAGE: rhotics (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: USAGE: rhotics (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
From: "Pascal A. Kramm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: samhain?
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: What are the Sampa representations for various |r|s?
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Intercalation & Calendar Numbers (was: samhain?)
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Soleil
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: USAGE: rhotics (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: USAGE: rhotics (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: USAGE: rhotics (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: USAGE: rhotics (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: Intercalation & Calendar Numbers (was: samhain?)
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: samhain?
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: samhain?
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: rhotic miscellany (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: Intercalation & Calendar Numbers (was: samhain?)
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: Soleil
From: Jan van Steenbergen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: samhain?
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: Disgusting thread... ;-)
From: Jan van Steenbergen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: USAGE: pronunciation mimicry (was: rhotics)
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: rhotic miscellany (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: What are the Sampa representations for various |r|s?
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. calendars (was: samhain?)
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: rhotic miscellany (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 10:28:51 -0500
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Soleil
caeruleancentaur scripsit:
> Thanks! That's been plaguing me for years. My next (rhetorical)
> question is: Why would anyone want to make a diminutive
> of "sun"? "What a cute little sun!" "Ear" I can understand!
Diminutives often survived in French because the plain roots would
have been crushed completely by sound change: APEM for example
would have surfaced as "�e", which would be unintelligible.
ModF "abeille" is Occitan in form < APICULU(S); in rural dialects,
"mouche-�-miel" is or was used instead.
--
John Cowan [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
O beautiful for patriot's dream that sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears!
America! America! God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law!
-- one of the verses not usually taught in U.S. schools
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 15:27:40 +0000
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Question about word-initial velar nasal
(Sorry, this first went direct to Philip - GMail Reply-To header)
Philip Newton wrote at 2004-11-04 07:00:02 (+0100)
> On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 02:31:38 +0000, Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Danny Wier wrote at 2004-10-24 06:38:00 (-0500)
> > > From: "Tim May"
> > >
> > > > Incidentally, what languages _do_ allow /N/ initally?
> > > > Offhand, I can only think of Vietnamese and Tibetan, and
> > > > it's a tricky thing to look up.
> > >
> > > Albanian, and I have no idea how that happened.
> >
> > Really? How is this indicated in Albanian writing? I've just
> > been looking into the language, and I can't see any mention of
> > it.
>
> "ng", I suppose.
>
> At any rate, http://www.google.com/search?q=nga+site%3Aal finds a
> number of hits for the word "nga" in Albanian sites.
>
That's very interesting. It certainly appears that "nga" is an
Albanian word - it seems to be a preposition meaning "from" "of" or
"by".
On the other hand, the UPSID profile for Albanian doesn't list a velar
nasal
http://www.langmaker.com/db/ups_albanian.htm
and none of the pronunciation guides I can find describe either a
velar nasal phoneme or an "ng" digraph. Which leaves me wondering how
"nga" is pronounced.
> (Strangely enough, it also finds a number of sentences containing
> e-dot, which I had only known from Lithuanian -- I only know
> e-umlaut for Albanian. Maybe a dialect compromise meaning "some
> dialects pronounce this /�/, others /e/"?)
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 10:33:24 -0500
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: rhotics (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
----- Original Message -----
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 19:29:30 -0500, Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
>>Actually, I didn't really believe my friend. He said my "r" pronunciation
>>in German wasn't "robust" enough, but sounded French.
>
> I fear we'll never know what he meant...
His most common schtick with me is teasing criticism. That's fine.
>> Actually, I think my
>>best linguistic gifts lie in phonic mimicry. (Which is why I thought of
>>becoming an actress in my late teens). I have a very good ear for
>>pronunciations and can usually reproduce them pretty well, which has
>>gotten
>>me in trouble a few times when my rapid comprehension was not up to my
>>speaking.
>
> A most remarkable and seldom gift! I've known A Swiss German who told me
> that native speaker of Spanish had taken him for mentally challenged
> because
> of his lack of vocabulary.
Ha! Yeah, that's the problem. You have some basic vocabulary and some
useful phrases, but you speak them well. Then no defenses to muster against
charges of idiocy. But I usually have some trace of an accent. I prided
myself, though, in Geneva in being able to hide my American heritage.
People usually asked me if I was from Britain or Germany. Had to practice,
then, on my plosives.
Is mimicry of pronunciation that remarkable? I'm fairly good at accents,
too, but not flawless. A lot of Americans like to make fun of a southern
accent, assuming that it is monolithic and not multifarious and regional. I
realize that this is the same of England and its variations, and if one is
going to "adopt" an English accent, she should listen closely to one region,
or even just one person, and copy that, not just copy the copies of British
accents. I'm not sure Renee Zellweger was entirely convincing in _Bridget
Jones Diary_. she sounded just a little too "plummy." ?? But it's easier
for me to gauge British mimicry of American accents.
Our actor Billy Bob Thornton (born in Arkansas) gave a hilarious interview,
mimicking actors mimicking a southern accent (he's a pro--he's one of the
most versatile actors I've ever seen and I like him best in _Pushing Tin_
and _Slingblade_). "What the hell kinda accent is that?" he says, of his
mimicry of a mimicked southern accent. I've always admired actors, like
Helen Mirren and especially Toni Collette, who can fool me into thinking
they are American. Collette does a working class Philly accent in The Sixth
Sense, and a more generic American accent in _Changing Places_. Oh! And
Kenneth Branach! He was a major character in _Dead Again_ and I couldn't
put my finger on what was different about him. Bingo! He had not the
slightest trace of a British accent! I don't think Anthony Hopkins was
quite as good in _Nixon_.
>>> I've always thought of the German non-rhoticity to
>>> be related to the uvular realization of the /r/, but that might be
>>> wrong.
>>
>>It might be right. I've heard "der" pronounced as though it rhymes with
>>British English "hair."
>
> German |her| and non-rhotic English |hair| may both be [hE6]
>
>>> By the way, I assume that English also had a trill-flap /r/ originally,
>>> but is there any evidence on the time it was fricativized?
>>
>>I'm unsure what you mean by fricativized when speaking of British English
>>pronunciation. Do you mean "flapped"? Retroflex?
>
> I should have said 'approximazed' (or something alike). For what I know,
> English /r/ may be retroflex, but not necessarily, but it's almost always
> an
> approximant [r\], not a trill-tap (as e.g. in Scots).
Do you mean the retroflex "r" that is not as exaggerated a sound as American
retroflex "r," and spoken by a lot of Brits? I hear that most often. Less
often do I hear the "r" flapped, as in "very" or "horrid"; does it strike
some British speakers as uppish and elite?
>>Are you Swiss? Do you or have you live(d) in Switzerland?
>
> Yes, I do, I live in Berne and speak Bernese German.
I had a very pleasant visit to Berne. We went in December of 1985. We
clocked the time it took for the signs to change from "sortie" to "Ausfahrt"
on the Autobahn. We fed carrots to the bears, all of them very antic, and I
took a picture of my friend next to a wall near the bear pit that had
graffiti written on it: Ba"r oder nicht Ba"r: das ist hier die Frage. I
have a picture here of store on a corner (a no entry sign on the street).
The building has a corner tower on it next to an arcade. Painted on the
cement wall is "Apotheke und Drogerie: Scheidegger," and above it is a mural
of customers dressed in seventeenth century clothing. IS THAT STILL THERE?
I spent an hour inside a Berne toy shop drooling over a little toy Apotheke
all lit up by electric light. I think it might have been in the pharmacy: I
see from my photograph that is has an attached corner tower. From the
bridge, the old town looked like a toy itself, with its clock tower,
steeples, and shining shop windows. I had no Schwiizertu"tsche, much less
the Bernese German, but they understood hochdeutsch, of course, and also
French and English. I bought a sweater that I have to this day. It's
beginning to get a little threadbare, but I can't bear to throw it away.
I'll ask my friend if she remembers more about our day trip to Berne. I
took some lovely pictures of architecture, some very notable gargoyles, and
I wish we could have stayed longer.
Sally
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Message: 4
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 10:36:36 -0500
From: "Pascal A. Kramm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: rhotics (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 14:37:56 -0500, J. 'Mach' Wust <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 12:11:30 -0500, Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>I've never heard a uvular trill [R\] among francophones; rather, the
>>fricative [R] or the unvoiced fricative /x/, especially after "t": "trois,"
>>etc. The uvular trills I'm familiar with occur in Hebrew (in fact I was
>>just practicing it with a group of Israelis the other night), and among
>>certain German speakers. Many Germans, I gather, don't trill, but merely
>>fricatize the "r"; but I have a teasing friend who tells me that I sound
>>French when I pronounce German. That may well be; my training has been
>>mostly in French and Spanish.
>
>Because of the /r/-realization? I would have said that the French accent of
>German isn't characterized by a specific realization of /r/, but rather (by
>rhythm and melody, of course) by the realization of /�/ , /h/ and /i/.
If someone here in Germany wants to imitate a French dialect, he'll most
notably omit the initial "h" sound (e.g. turning "hotel" into "otel"), and
pronounce the German "ch" as "sh".
>Are you asking whether the change originated in Germany and England (I don't
>get the meaning of "the change came about")? I've heard that the uvular
>trill was first intoduced by French curtisanes at the court of the absolute
>kings, became fashionable among the nobles and spread more and more. German
>also had originally a trill-flap, and the uvular pronunciation is said to be
>a French import.
Yes, that could be very well possible.
>>Never got into Schweizerdeutsch... I don't even know how to spell the way
>>they pronounce it there! :( Swizerdutsch? And then all the variations!!
>
>|Schwyzerd�tsch| and |Schwiizert�tsch| may be the most common ways to write
>it, but many variations are possible (the |y| is used for /i/ as opposed to
>|i| for /I/, but not all share this use).
Most common is "Schwyzerd�tsch", but I've also seen "Schwyzert�tsch"
sometimes. Never with the double i, however.
--
Pascal A. Kramm, author of Choton
official Choton homepage:
http://www.choton.org
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Message: 5
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 10:48:16 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: samhain?
On Thu, Nov 04, 2004 at 06:37:41AM +0200, Steg Belsky wrote:
> It would definitely be cool if people wrote
> 20-8-5764, though :-) . Or even 20-2-5764, counting from the "New Year
> for years".
> Although how would you number the intercalated month in leap years?
That very question is no doubt why the count still starts with Nisan
instead of Tishri, because then the extra month falls conveniently
between months 12 and 1 and may be referred to as month 13. :)
-Marcos
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Message: 6
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 11:10:30 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What are the Sampa representations for various |r|s?
On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 10:27:13PM -0500, Sally Caves wrote:
> The retroflex "r." What I, an American, say in pronouncing "American."
It is unlikely that what you, as an American, say in pronouncing
"American", is retroflex. For most Americans it's [r\], which is an alveolar
approximant.
> The final retroflex "r." What I, an American, say in pronouncing "car." Is
> there much difference? I feel that there is a minute one, maybe not enough
> to count.
Well, there is no release in "car" (otherwise it would be something like
"ca-ruh"), and there is also the fact that the -r changes the sound of
the "a" (called "r-coloration" or "rhoticization"), and represented by a
` on the vowel: [ka`r\].
> The flapped "r." What a Latina might say in pronouncing her name "Sara."
[4]
> The front trilled "r," what a Welshman might say in pronouncing Ronabwy. Is
> that [R]?
Nope, that's [r]. It's the most common rhotic among the world's languages,
and therefore gets the unadorned symbol.
> The voiceless front trilled "r," what a Welshman might say in pronouncing
> "rhan." This is sometimes not actually a trill, so much as a "kind" of
> palatal fricative, the sound you get when you limit the voiceless trill to
> one "beat."
I don't know this sound. A voiceless version of [r] would be written [r_0]...
> The voiced velar fricative. What a Frenchwoman would say when pronouncing
> the word "rouge." Is that the one represented by [R]?
The voiced velar fricative is [G], which is not a rhotic. The
voiced *uvular* fricative is [R].
> The velar trill. [R\] What a uvularly athletic German of the "older
> generation" ;) might say in pronouncing "geradeaus." I notice this sign
> requires two characters. Does the backslash indicate that it is velar?
Again, uvular. The backslash doesn't have any regular meaning in CXS;
it's just a way of getting another symbol out of a letter. There are
lots of digraphs in CXS, just because ASCII doesn't have enough monographs.
> The retroflex flap, a sound I think I invented, which a Teonivar would say
> when pronouncing "Erahenahil" [paradise]. I've given two detailed
> descriptions of that sound in a thread called "Usage: rhotics, etc." Is it
> invented or not?
Sorry, no. It's a standard sound found in natlangs, especially on the
Indian subcontinent, and in CXS it's written [r`]. Note that unlike the
backslash, the ` does regularly mean "retroflex" in CXS.
> The alveolar flap (no retroflex), which is like the flapped Latin "r" but
> articulated at the palate or post alveolar. What a Teonivar would say when
> pronouncing "yry firrimby" ("me all grateful," or "thank you.")
The alveolar *lateral* flap is [l\], but for a non-lateral flaps, CXS has only
one symbol for dental, alveolar, and postalveolar: [4]. I think there
are diacritics you can use to distinguish, but I'm not familiar with how
they work.
-Marcos
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Message: 7
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 18:58:28 +0200
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Intercalation & Calendar Numbers (was: samhain?)
On Nov 4, 2004, at 5:48 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 04, 2004 at 06:37:41AM +0200, Steg Belsky wrote:
>> It would definitely be cool if people wrote
>> 20-8-5764, though :-) . Or even 20-2-5764, counting from the "New
>> Year
>> for years".
>> Although how would you number the intercalated month in leap years?
> That very question is no doubt why the count still starts with Nisan
> instead of Tishri, because then the extra month falls conveniently
> between months 12 and 1 and may be referred to as month 13. :)
> -Marcos
Ah, if it only were that simple... ;)
The holiday of Purim, after all, is celebrated in Adar2 in leap years,
not Adar1... so maybe Adar1 is the intercalated one! :P
ObCon;
The Rokbeigalmki calendar has this problem - the extra month, Y�pleg,
that naturally falls out when there are 13 new moons from one [Southern
Hemisphere] winter solstice to the next, is the second-to-last month,
since the last month, Jal�g, is the partial moon-cycle from the last
new moon to the solstice; the remainder of Jal�g's cycle is Ghal�b, the
first month of the new year.
-Stephen (Steg)
"Ezekiel... he has like the crazy thing!"
~ brilliant biblical commentary by n
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Message: 8
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 11:58:48 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Soleil
Charlie wrote:
> Which prompts the question: if it's a regular development, why
> does "oreille" have -lle, while "soleil" only has "-l"?
>
Nowadays, spelling convention to distinguish Fem. from Masc.; historically
auricula- vs. soliculu-.
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Message: 9
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 17:02:26 +0000
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: rhotics (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
Sally Caves wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>>> By the way, I assume that English also had a trill-flap /r/
>>>> originally,
>>>> but is there any evidence on the time it was fricativized?
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm unsure what you mean by fricativized when speaking of British
>>> English
>>> pronunciation. Do you mean "flapped"? Retroflex?
>>
>>
>> I should have said 'approximazed' (or something alike). For what I know,
>> English /r/ may be retroflex, but not necessarily, but it's almost
>> always
>> an
>> approximant [r\], not a trill-tap (as e.g. in Scots).
>
>
> Do you mean the retroflex "r" that is not as exaggerated a sound as
> American
> retroflex "r," and spoken by a lot of Brits? I hear that most often.
> Less
> often do I hear the "r" flapped, as in "very" or "horrid"; does it strike
> some British speakers as uppish and elite?
No, it strikes us as dead(or very nearly so). If someone uses it, they
are certainly both old and very posh (an impression only, mind).
My /r\/, I think, is an post-alveolar approximant. The American one is
retroflex, as far as I can tell.
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Message: 10
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 17:05:22 +0000
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: rhotics (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
Pascal A. Kramm wrote:
>On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 14:37:56 -0500, J. 'Mach' Wust <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>>On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 12:11:30 -0500, Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>I've never heard a uvular trill [R\] among francophones; rather, the
>>>fricative [R] or the unvoiced fricative /x/, especially after "t": "trois,"
>>>etc. The uvular trills I'm familiar with occur in Hebrew (in fact I was
>>>just practicing it with a group of Israelis the other night), and among
>>>certain German speakers. Many Germans, I gather, don't trill, but merely
>>>fricatize the "r"; but I have a teasing friend who tells me that I sound
>>>French when I pronounce German. That may well be; my training has been
>>>mostly in French and Spanish.
>>>
>>>
>>Because of the /r/-realization? I would have said that the French accent of
>>German isn't characterized by a specific realization of /r/, but rather (by
>>rhythm and melody, of course) by the realization of /�/ , /h/ and /i/.
>>
>>
>
>If someone here in Germany wants to imitate a French dialect, he'll most
>notably omit the initial "h" sound (e.g. turning "hotel" into "otel"), and
>pronounce the German "ch" as "sh".
>
>
>
We do the h-dropping(though that happens in most dialects, too, in
England, though not consistently). We replace /T/ and /D/ with /s/ and
/z/, respectively, and add many front rounded vowels (/b2:d/ instead of
/b3:d/, for example).
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Message: 11
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 16:57:58 +0000
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: rhotics (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
Sally Caves wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>> On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 19:29:30 -0500, Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Actually, I didn't really believe my friend. He said my "r"
>>> pronunciation
>>> in German wasn't "robust" enough, but sounded French.
>>
>>
>> I fear we'll never know what he meant...
>
>
> His most common schtick with me is teasing criticism. That's fine.
>
>>> Actually, I think my
>>> best linguistic gifts lie in phonic mimicry. (Which is why I
>>> thought of
>>> becoming an actress in my late teens). I have a very good ear for
>>> pronunciations and can usually reproduce them pretty well, which has
>>> gotten
>>> me in trouble a few times when my rapid comprehension was not up to my
>>> speaking.
>>
>>
>> A most remarkable and seldom gift! I've known A Swiss German who told me
>> that native speaker of Spanish had taken him for mentally challenged
>> because
>> of his lack of vocabulary.
>
>
> Ha! Yeah, that's the problem. You have some basic vocabulary and some
> useful phrases, but you speak them well. Then no defenses to muster
> against
> charges of idiocy. But I usually have some trace of an accent. I prided
> myself, though, in Geneva in being able to hide my American heritage.
> People usually asked me if I was from Britain or Germany. Had to
> practice,
> then, on my plosives.
>
> Is mimicry of pronunciation that remarkable? I'm fairly good at accents,
> too, but not flawless. A lot of Americans like to make fun of a southern
> accent, assuming that it is monolithic and not multifarious and
> regional. I
> realize that this is the same of England and its variations, and if
> one is
> going to "adopt" an English accent, she should listen closely to one
> region,
> or even just one person, and copy that, not just copy the copies of
> British
> accents. I'm not sure Renee Zellweger was entirely convincing in
> _Bridget
> Jones Diary_. she sounded just a little too "plummy." ?? But it's
> easier
> for me to gauge British mimicry of American accents.
RP ([A: pi:]) is a fairly good thing to mimic, if you're heading to the
south. If you're going to the north, you'll sound like a southerner.
And people may make fun of you.
If you're looking for a bad fake British accent, try Brad Pitt in 'Troy'.
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Message: 12
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 18:17:03 +0100
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: rhotics (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
--- "Pascal A. Kramm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [r\VUt_?]:
> If someone here in Germany wants to imitate a French
> dialect, he'll most notably omit the initial "h"
> sound (e.g. turning "hotel" into "otel"), and
> pronounce the German "ch" as "sh".
Is [x] turned to [S] _all_ the time, or only when it
appears palatalized as [C]? As a native speaker of
English, I sometimes catch myself doing the same
thing; i.e., I'd pronounce /machen/ pretty much
perfectly, as ["ma.xn=], but I'd realize the phrase
/ich d�chte/ as [IS."[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Do the French have any particular problems with the
[x] sound (in its velar allophone, not in its palatal allophone)?
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Message: 13
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 12:26:44 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Intercalation & Calendar Numbers (was: samhain?)
On Thu, Nov 04, 2004 at 06:58:28PM +0200, Steg Belsky wrote:
> >That very question is no doubt why the count still starts with Nisan
> >instead of Tishri, because then the extra month falls conveniently
> >between months 12 and 1 and may be referred to as month 13. :)
> >-Marcos
>
> Ah, if it only were that simple... ;)
> The holiday of Purim, after all, is celebrated in Adar2 in leap years,
> not Adar1... so maybe Adar1 is the intercalated one! :P
Ah, but Adar I *is* the intercalated one; it's not just the holiday
observances, but also the number of days. Adar II is the main Adar, and
Adar I is the extra one. Nevertheless, month 12 is Adar in non-leap
years and Adar I in leap years, while Adar II is month 13.
> The Rokbeigalmki calendar has this problem - the extra month, Y�pleg,
> that naturally falls out when there are 13 new moons from one [Southern
> Hemisphere] winter solstice to the next, is the second-to-last month,
> since the last month, Jal�g, is the partial moon-cycle from the last
> new moon to the solstice; the remainder of Jal�g's cycle is Ghal�b, the
> first month of the new year.
In the Chinese calendar, which uses a similar system, the intercalated
month varies in position depending on which "solar month" (30-degree arc
of the Sun's path through the Zodiac) has no new moon. The extra month
gets the same number as the preceding month, so you have e.g. "second
month 5" between month 5 and month 6. (And there are no month names,
only numbers).
-Marcos
>
> -Stephen (Steg)
> "Ezekiel... he has like the crazy thing!"
> ~ brilliant biblical commentary by n
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Message: 14
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 17:41:00 +0000
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: samhain?
Thomas Leigh wrote:
> known to Irish imperialists and the ignorant
> as "Old Irish" ;-)
Remember: the Scotti were Irish Gaels who thought Alba looked quite
nice and thought a trip over was in order. Imperialism? Pshaw! ;-D
K.
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Message: 15
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 17:36:16 +0000
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: samhain?
Joe wrote:
> joshua tanaka wrote:
>
>> why is 'samhain' pronounced 'saUen' ?
I'd like to point out that I pronouce it [sABIn_j], [n_j] being a
palatal nasal.
K. -- Irish person.
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Message: 16
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 19:03:00 +0100
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: rhotic miscellany (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
--- Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> skrev:
> That was the /r/ used by Hitler, as you hear on
> ancient newsreels. It may be - I don't know - that
> this accounts for its demise in the last half
> century.
The band Rammstein also does this a lot, which doesn't
help to dissuade the rumors that they're a bunch of
neo-Nazis (which they're not, but most people don't
know that or even care). The pronunciation of their
/r/ drove me up the wall, because it was so
_irritating_ after a while. I kept being reminded of
those very same ancient newsreels, with all the
stomping jackboots and 'Deutschland Erwache' banners.
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Message: 17
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 13:19:36 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Intercalation & Calendar Numbers (was: samhain?)
On Thu, Nov 04, 2004 at 12:26:44PM -0500, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> In the Chinese calendar, which uses a similar system, the intercalated
> month varies in position depending on which "solar month" (30-degree arc
> of the Sun's path through the Zodiac) has no new moon.
Argh, backwards. It's which solar month has *two* new moons - 12 solar months,
13 lunar months, hence the leap year. The month that has no solar month
boundary falling within it is the leap month.
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Message: 18
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 18:23:53 +0000
From: Jan van Steenbergen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Soleil
--- Charlie skrzypszy:
> Thanks! That's been plaguing me for years. My next (rhetorical)
> question is: Why would anyone want to make a diminutive
> of "sun"? "What a cute little sun!" "Ear" I can understand!
Well, in fact the expression "zonnetje" (dim. of sun) is very common
in Dutch. In this particular case it means not "little sun", but
rather something like "pleasant sun", as in "Ik ga vandaag eens
lekker de hele dag in het zonnetje zitten".
Furthermore, I doubt very much of soleil/SOLICULUM ever had a really
dimunitive meaning in Early French. As John said, the diminutive
forms were adopted merely in order to avoid confusion between many
forms that became too similar as a result of the dropping of medial
consonants and similar developments. I doubt very much if the
dimunitive meaning was adopted along with the form. Note also that
French later developed other dimunitive forms.
> Which prompts the question: if it's a regular development, why
> does "oreille" have -lle, while "soleil" only has "-l"?
That's because of final -a in Latin. In French, all final consonants
collapsed, except -a, which became -e. Hence, "oreille" (f) is from
AURICULA, while "soleil" (m) is from SOLICULU(M).
^ ^
Jan
=====
"If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed room
with a mosquito."
http://steen.free.fr/
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Message: 19
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 13:20:47 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: samhain?
On Thu, Nov 04, 2004 at 05:36:16PM +0000, Keith Gaughan wrote:
> Joe wrote:
> >joshua tanaka wrote:
> >
> >> why is 'samhain' pronounced 'saUen' ?
>
> I'd like to point out that I pronouce it [sABIn_j], [n_j] being a
> palatal nasal.
Don't have to write [n_j] - the X-SAMPA and CXS symbol for a
palatal nasal is [J].
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Message: 20
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 18:30:10 +0000
From: Jan van Steenbergen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Disgusting thread... ;-)
--- Pascal A. Kramm skrzypszy:
> Well, it's not that far from the border, but the Dutch border.
Yeah? Were exactly, if I may ask?
> French names (like mine) can be easily found, and there's lots of
> French stuff in the supermarkets, esp. camembert. I *love*
> camembert. I also love croissants and baguettes.
The combination French first name with German last name is
particularly common in Luxemburg. As a matter of fact, you could
easily have presented yourself as a Luxemburger.
All the French stuff you describe (I don't like camembert; I quite
like Brie and Port-Salut, though; I adore croissant, and I don't mind
a baguette from time to time) is quite common here, too. As a matter
of fact, I wonder if France really needs to be close in order to have
those thins in the supermarkets.
Jan
=====
"If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed room
with a mosquito."
http://steen.free.fr/
___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger -
all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
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Message: 21
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 13:35:13 -0500
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: pronunciation mimicry (was: rhotics)
On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 10:33:24 -0500, Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>> A most remarkable and seldom gift! I've known A Swiss German who told me
>> that native speaker of Spanish had taken him for mentally challenged
>> because of his lack of vocabulary.
>
>Ha! Yeah, that's the problem. You have some basic vocabulary and some
>useful phrases, but you speak them well. Then no defenses to muster
>against charges of idiocy. But I usually have some trace of an accent. I
>prided myself, though, in Geneva in being able to hide my American
>heritage. People usually asked me if I was from Britain or Germany. Had
>to practice, then, on my plosives.
>
>Is mimicry of pronunciation that remarkable? I'm fairly good at accents,
>too, but not flawless. A lot of Americans like to make fun of a southern
>accent, assuming that it is monolithic and not multifarious and regional.
That kind of mimicry is not remarkable, but it is remarkable that somebody
can so totally acquire a foreign language that even native speakers of the
same region are cheated!
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
j. 'mach' wust
<off-topic>
>>>Are you Swiss? Do you or have you live(d) in Switzerland?
>>
>> Yes, I do, I live in Berne and speak Bernese German.
>
>I had a very pleasant visit to Berne. We went in December of 1985. We
>clocked the time it took for the signs to change from "sortie" to
>"Ausfahrt" on the Autobahn. We fed carrots to the bears, all of them very
>antic, and I took a picture of my friend next to a wall near the bear pit
>that had graffiti written on it: Ba"r oder nicht Ba"r: das ist hier die
>Frage. I have a picture here of store on a corner (a no entry sign on the
>street). The building has a corner tower on it next to an arcade. Painted
>on the cement wall is "Apotheke und Drogerie: Scheidegger," and above it is
>a mural of customers dressed in seventeenth century clothing. IS THAT
>STILL THERE?
I don't know. I've been in the old city and have had a look at the pharmacy
I thought you were talking about, but it wasn't that one...
By the way, the name "Scheidegger" is very Swiss, even in its spelling: The
|gg|-digraph is only used in Switzerland for a fortis /k:/, which is
represented by |(c)k| in standard German. Swiss German "der Egge"
(corner/hill) corresponds to standard German "die Ecke/das Eck" (corner).
>I had no Schwiizertu"tsche, much less the Bernese German
In Bernese German, it'd be "Schwytzerd�tsch"! ;)
</off-topic>
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Message: 22
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 18:43:10 +0000
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: rhotic miscellany (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
>On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 06:57:55 +0000, Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>
>>I'm told - tho I don't know how true this is - that this is
>>typical of young children: to start with trilling the uvular but gradually
>>to lose the trill.
>>
>>
>
>Remarkable! I wonder whether the same could be said about German children.
>
>
>
>>On Wednesday, November 3, 2004, at 05:11 , Sally Caves wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Many Germans, I gather, don't trill, but merely
>>>fricatize the "r";
>>>
>>>
>>I gather this is so. At one time the trilled lingual r was also widespread.
>> That was the /r/ used by Hitler, as you hear on ancient newsreels. It may
>>be - I don't know - that this accounts for its demise in the last half
>>century.
>>
>>
>
>I rather suppose this is because the pronunciation of standard German has
>become less prescriptive. The prescribed realization of /r/ was a lingual
>trill-tap [r], and in the first half of the 20th century, an strong uvular
>trill was common on radio. I also suppose that the trill was favoured
>because it's more clearly audible, taking into account that the sound
>technology wasn't that avanced at this time and that it was the very first
>generation that had electric amplification, since before, the bare human
>voice had to be strong enough.
>
>
I had a Swiss teacher, who had an alveolar [r]. She also had [e], where
the German I learnt has [EMAIL PROTECTED](so, for instance, 'ruhe' was [rue], or
similar).
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Message: 23
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 18:52:06 +0000
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What are the Sampa representations for various |r|s?
On Thursday, November 4, 2004, at 03:27 , Sally Caves wrote:
> I'm posing the question under different cover, since I think many of you
> are
> tuning out some threads, or are distracted by recent disappointing events.
I've already answered most of this in another mail that I sent off before
receiving this; so I repeat what I have already posted :)
[snip]
> The front trilled "r," what a Welshman might say in pronouncing Ronabwy.
> Is
> that [R]?
No - it's [r]
> The voiceless front trilled "r," what a Welshman might say in pronouncing
> "rhan." This is sometimes not actually a trill, so much as a "kind" of
> palatal fricative, the sound you get when you limit the voiceless trill to
> one "beat."
It depends on your analysis of the sound. If you think it is essentially
devoicing of /r/ with the aspiration being a secondary feature, you would
write [r_0]; if, like me, you consider that it is essentially an aspirated
/r/ with the devoicing being a secondary feature you would write [r_h].
This has been debated many times over the years I have been on Conlang.
Personally, I think [r_0] and [r_h] are basically the same thing - it's a
matter of personal choice which feature you consider primary & which
secondary.
If it's just one beat, then we have a voiceless aspirated flap, i.e. [4_o]
or [4_h]
> The voiced velar fricative. What a Frenchwoman would say when pronouncing
> the word "rouge." Is that the one represented by [R]?
I've never heard a velar fricative used for this. IME it has always been a
voiced uvular fricative or even uvular approximant.
The voiced velar fricative which is normal for intervocalic /g/ in Spanish
id [G]. The voiced uvular fricative/approximant is indeed [R].
================================================
> The velar trill. [R\] What a uvularly athletic German of the "older
> generation" ;) might say in pronouncing "geradeaus." I notice this sign
> requires two characters. Does the backslash indicate that it is velar?
[R\] is the _uvular_ trill (IPA inverted upper-case R)
No, the backslash has nothing to do with velarity, uvularity, trillness or
anything else. It is merely a method of extending the use of ASCII
characters. I quote from J.C. wells of the University of London (the guy
responsible for X-SAMPA):
"However no segmental role is currently defined for the backslash [in
SAMPA]......I propose that we....bring the backslash into service as a
kind of universal diacritic, meaning 'the preceding character is to be
interpreted in a special way'. IPA alphabetic characters not yet assigned
a SAMPA code can be given a two-place code, in which the second character
is \."
As far as I know, a velar trill is not a possibility. there is certainly
no IPA symbol for it.
> The retroflex flap, a sound I think I invented, which a Teonivar would say
> when pronouncing "Erahenahil" [paradise]. I've given two detailed
> descriptions of that sound in a thread called "Usage: rhotics, etc." Is
> it
> invented or not?
I guess you did invent it for Teonaht, but sort of like re-inventing the
wheel :)
The sound does exist - the X-sampa & CXS is [r`]
> The alveolar flap (no retroflex), which is like the flapped Latin "r" but
> articulated at the palate or post alveolar. What a Teonivar would say
> when
> pronouncing "yry firrimby" ("me all grateful," or "thank you.")
>
> Maybe Sampa can't cover all of these.
X-SAMPA and CXS can cover all that IPA covers. But you've got me stumped
on this one. The flap or tap [4] (IPA "small Latin fish-hook r" [ɾ]) is
given by IPA as dental/alveolar/postalveolar. You can specify it as dental
in CXS thus [4_d]. But i don't know how you specify that it is
postalveolar. Hopefully, someone can enlighten us.
Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason." [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]
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Message: 24
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 18:52:13 +0000
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: calendars (was: samhain?)
On Wednesday, November 3, 2004, at 10:09 , Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 07:39:24PM +0000, Ray Brown wrote:
>> To add to the fun, both "New Style" - with the dates given above - and
>> "Old Style" (following the Julian Calendar) quarters days are observed
>> for
>> different purposes. The financial year, for example, begins with the Old
>> Style Lady Day, now the 6th April, since until we adopted the New Style
>> calender in 1752 Lady Day was also "New Year's Day". Rather boringly ever
>> since then New year's Day has been Jan. 1st.
>
> Though for some reason the fiscal date was not further adjusted when the
> Julian and Gregorian calendars drifted further apart in 1900; Julian
> March 25th is Gregorian April 7th these days.
I imagine it was simply because by 1900, it was no longer remembered that
the fiscal year began on the Old Style "lady Day'.
> Based on what I've read, January 1st was always the date called "New
> Year's Day"; March 25th was called simply "Lady's Day" even when it was
> the date upon which the year number changed.
I am probably guilty of exaggeration or over-simplification. I get the
impression, however, that in earlier times New years's day (that is, Jan.
1st) was not much celebrated. I guess the annual round of religious
festivals kept track of the passing of time. I suspect that it is with the
decline of widespread observance of most of the old festivals that secular
'land marks' like the New Year have grown in importance.
> The old scheme is admittedly more interesting, but for "interesting" I
> prefer to switch calendars entirely. :) The Jews, for instance, change
Yep - the Jewish calendar is certainly more interesting than the Gregorian.
The Mayan calendar is even better :)
Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason." [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]
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Message: 25
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 13:56:16 -0500
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: rhotic miscellany (was: Advanced English + Babel text)
On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 19:03:00 +0100, Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> --- Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> skrev:
>> That was the /r/ used by Hitler, as you hear on
>> ancient newsreels. It may be - I don't know - that
>> this accounts for its demise in the last half
>> century.
>
>The band Rammstein also does this a lot, which doesn't
>help to dissuade the rumors that they're a bunch of
>neo-Nazis (which they're not, but most people don't
>know that or even care). The pronunciation of their
>/r/ drove me up the wall, because it was so
>_irritating_ after a while. I kept being reminded of
>those very same ancient newsreels, with all the
>stomping jackboots and 'Deutschland Erwache' banners.
As I've said, I think the accent used in these ancient newsreels was just
the standard media accent of that time, for nazis as well as for communists
or democrats. We just happen to hear more nazi newsreels than other ones
(which is sad if you think about it).
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
j. 'mach' wust
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