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There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Coastlines and a minor complaint
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: partial letter replacement in languages?
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Reading old Greek (was: kudos (was: most looked-up words))
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Coastlines
From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Austrian/German "thanks"?
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Anybody on AIM
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: German style orthography
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: Coastlines
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: partial letter replacement in languages?
From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: vowels: are they necessary?
From: Rene Uittenbogaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Fwd: Greek definite article (was Re: Addendum: a holy spirit)
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: Sk�lansk - History and Babel text
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: Coastlines and a minor complaint
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: Austrian/German "thanks"?
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: German style orthography
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Babel Text in Xinkutlan
From: Geoff Horswood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: JC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: Conlangs in the movies
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 01:11:45 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Coastlines and a minor complaint
Mike Ellis wrote:
> Listserv interface was doing some weird things again. Expect to see this
> message twice.
Strange things are happening here too, of late-- repeats of earlier msgs.,
replies before originals; and some of mine take up to 24 hours to get back
to me. Plus a couple bounce-o-grams for msgs I hadn't sent. I'd been
blaming msn.com for all but the last.........
---------------------------------------------
>
> Adrian Morgan wrote:
> > A technique I invented about a decade ago for drawing coastlines:
> >
> > http://web.netyp.com/member/dragon/temp/islandmap.htm
> >
> > Just in case it interests anybody.
>
> Neat. Gives you peninsulas and bays and everything. Here's my result:
>
> http://suzsoiz.free.fr/tempy/map1.jpg
>
It is neat, and I don't want to rain on the parade, or pontificate...but
there's a couple problems IMO.
1. a map with such a detailed coastline would have to be extremely
small-scale, no? Seems to me it also implies a rocky land mass because
otherwise---
2. erosion by the surf/tides would surely tend to smooth out a lot of
irregularities. (I'm thinking of the east coast of Florida, which even on
small scale maps tends to be a gentle long curve, with occasional inlets)
3. a riverbank, lakeshore, or island in an uninhabited area, might be quite
irregular; but would tend to get smoothed out within a town or city, where
the hand of man has set foot.
When I was playing around with my (fairly large scale) hand-drawn maps in
PAINT, I could blow up the bmp and make things as irregular as I wanted, but
when reduced back to normal size, most of it didn't show up.
>> H. S. Teoh replied:
>
> >Interesting way of creating maps. :-) I wonder, though, what I should
> >do if I already have an approximate idea of what the map should look
> >like, but just need to set down the "fuzzy bits"?
>
(snip Mike's suggestion, which might be worth a try.)
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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 17:32:32 +1030
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
Tristan Mc Leay wrote:
> Well, here's my crappy recording, made from on my hardware digital
> music player. Best of a band bunch I'm afraid... MP3 at 96 kbps to
> satisfy you ;) (I spose given that it's mono I might as well make it
> 48, but that's too much like hard work.)
>
> http://thecartographers.net/sounds/vowels.mp3
> I arbitrarily chose to use the 'holly' pronunciation of 'holy' but I
> could just as well have used 'wholly'. Any difference between 'holly'
> and 'holy' is purely random and nothing should be read into it.
If I decide to make a permanent web page about Australian speech
(which I am contemplating), can I use yours as well? Just to show some
of the variety of idiolects that are all equally Australian?
Here's my comments, in order from most to least remarkable:
* By far the biggest surprise was your markedly diphtongonal nucleus
of "steam", which you pronounced [steim]. I would be almost
certain to mis-hear this as "stain".
* Pronouncing "holy" as "holly" is certainly strange, although
pronouncing it as "wholly" is not - I suspect that I am in
something like a 30/70 minority (that's just a guess).
* Things that are certainly unusual from my Adelaide perspective but
perfectly believable as idiolects include your monophthogonal
"stare" and your schwa-avoiding ends of "steer/tour". Also your
very low vowel in "storm".
* The way you pronounce "tourist" would place you with a minority of
speakers, but that minority is not terribly small, although in my
experience most members of that minority are older speakers (think
grandmothers).
* I do not think your pronunciation of "our" is markedly different
from mine.
I'm interested in the opinion of non-Australians on the list. Do all
you Americans and Europeans etc out there find any of the differences
between Tristan's idiolect and mine to be remarkable (if so, which),
and does one sound any closer than the other to your mental image of
an Australian accent? (Obviously, intonation should be completely
ignored; the question is about vowel quality.)
Adrian.
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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 07:08:45 +0000
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: partial letter replacement in languages?
On Thursday, December 9, 2004, at 09:25 , Philip Newton wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 02:48:04 +0200, Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> is there a term for when a language is evolving/being changed, &
>> replaces
>> one letter with another (ie, /d/ becomes /t/) in nearly all
>> instances...yet
>> there are still words in the resultant language which retain (to
>> continue
>> the example) /d/ ?
>
> I don't know a term for it,
Nor I - I do not think there is. Sound changes follow regular patterns, so
the most appropriate tem is "exception".
> but just wanted to note that some
> instances of this come when there are two (nearly) concurrent sound
> changes such that, say, /d/ becomes /t/ while, say, /D/ becomes /d/ --
> so all or most original /d/'s disappeared but there are still /d/'s in
> the resulting language that used to be a different sound.
Yes, but that is not what I understand Rodlox to mean. Where, to use his
example, /d/ generally becomes /t/, but there are a few cases where the
original sound is kept, there will IMO be only two reasons:
- in certain environments the change is not made. For example in French
-tion is normally pronounced /sjO`/, but after a preceding /s/, the /t/ is
not changed to /s/, so _question_ /kEstjO`/.
- a word is taken into the standard language from a dialect where the
change did not happen.
One would state the sound change, giving examples, and the note the
exceptions.
> (Perhaps Greek is an example, where /b/ -> /v/, but modern Greek has a
> /b/ phoneme which comes from,
Does it? Thee is actually controversy over the phonemic status of [b]], [d]
and [g] in modern Greek.
> I assume, earlier /mp/ -- it's certainly written |mp|.)
..and some analyze [b] as /mp/.
I gather there is in fact dialect variation in the pronunciation of things
like _ton patera_ (the father [acc.]) between {tOmba'tEra] and [tOba'tEra]
. AFAIK a word like _briki_ (a very useful implement for us coffee lovers)
is always AFAIK pronounced ['briki] but some phonematize it as /'mpriki/.
I want to stress that I *not* saying this analysis is correct, just that
it exists. Pesonally, I am agnostic about the phonemic status of the
voiced plosives in modern Greek.
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: 4
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 07:08:38 +0000
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Reading old Greek (was: kudos (was: most looked-up words))
On Thursday, December 9, 2004, at 09:36 , Philip Newton wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 07:30:58 +0000, Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> The
>> system used in Brit schools of the 19th & early 20th centuries is well
>> known; basically, you mentally transcribed it into Roman letters, so to
>> speak, and pronounced it like English!
>>
>> So, for example, _nous_ "mind, intellect" was pronounced /naws/ and
>> _naus_
>> "ship" was pronounced /nO:s/ and _kudos_ was pronounced /kju:dOs/.
>
> Ouch! Reminds me of a Frenchman I met in Greece who had studied a
> little Ancient Greek and tried to convince me that back then, the verb
> ending -euw was pronounced /2o/. (And of my [English] father, whose
> one Greek word is /hoU b&zI"lus/.)
>
> OTOH, I pronounce all Greek the same way as well -- with Modern Greek
> pronunciation.
So do I :)
It is at least *Greek*
> I'm sure that there are enough classicists who will
> shudder at /En arCi in o lOGOs, k_jE o lOGOs in prOs tOn TEOn/ and
> /patEr imOn o En tis uranis, ajiasTito tonoma su/.
Probably - but to read the opening verses of John's Gospel or the Pater
Noster in te pronunciation of 5th cent BCE Athens is not exactly correct!
There are two main problems as I see it in using ancient pronunciations:
- one should change according to dialect and time (Who does that?)
- we do not know all the details. What is the point to great lengths to
make sure you always distinguish between, say, [k] and [k_h] in all
environments when we do not know exactly how the pitch accent was
implemented?
Indeed, we know where the pitch accent was placed only for Homeric, Attic
& Aiolic Greek IIRC. I know that texts in, say, Doric are conventionally
printed with diacritics - but that is what it is, _convention_ based on
Attic Greek.
IME (quite a long one) those that use a reconstructed ancient
pronunciation actually have it modified, usually quite a bit, to suit
their L1 habits and certainly use something that would probably be
unrecognizable to most of the ancients.
I think it is important for a proper understanding of ancient metrics etc
to know the _theory_ of the reconstructionS [plural] for the different
varieties of Greek - but for practical purposes I use the current Greek
pronunciation.
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: 5
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 23:12:50 -0800
From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Coastlines
Emaelivpeth Adrian Morgan:
> A technique I invented about a decade ago for drawing coastlines:
> http://web.netyp.com/member/dragon/temp/islandmap.htm
Neat technique! I tried it out in The Gimp, but I ended up doodling
around with filters and made a map a totally different way. Here's my
results, inspired by your page:
http://arthaey.mine.nu:8080/~arthaey/conlang/culture/cities.html
--
AA
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Message: 6
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 07:42:43 +0000
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon) wrote:
> Tristan Mc Leay wrote:
>
>> Well, here's my crappy recording, made from on my hardware digital
>> music player. Best of a band bunch I'm afraid... MP3 at 96 kbps to
>> satisfy you ;) (I spose given that it's mono I might as well make it
>> 48, but that's too much like hard work.)
>>
>> http://thecartographers.net/sounds/vowels.mp3
>> I arbitrarily chose to use the 'holly' pronunciation of 'holy' but I
>> could just as well have used 'wholly'. Any difference between 'holly'
>> and 'holy' is purely random and nothing should be read into it.
>
>
>
> I'm interested in the opinion of non-Australians on the list. Do all
> you Americans and Europeans etc out there find any of the differences
> between Tristan's idiolect and mine to be remarkable (if so, which),
> and does one sound any closer than the other to your mental image of
> an Australian accent? (Obviously, intonation should be completely
> ignored; the question is about vowel quality.)
They sound near identical to me, actually. If I concentrate, I can pick
out individual differences, but appart from that, your accents sound
similar. And Tristan's does sound slightly more stereotypically
Austrialian, but if I was to guess, I would know your Australian-ness.
If you like, I'll record my accent, see what you think (British).
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Message: 7
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:42:27 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Austrian/German "thanks"?
Quoting "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 23:42:39 +0200, Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > are words such as /danke/ more German or Austrian or some other region?
>
> I guess standard German uses _danke_ in all regions. In more dialectal
> varieties, the word _danksch�n_ may be common in certain regions. In Swiss
> dialects, the French loan _merci_ is more common (at least in Western Swiss
> German), pronounced /'mers:i/, though you didn't ask about Switzerland. I
> doubt that Swiss people would use _merci_ in Swiss standard German.
I'd not presume to know exactly where to draw the line between Swiss Standard
German and very watered-down dialect, but I've heard _merci_ in variants I can
with little trouble understand.
Andreas
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Message: 8
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:51:56 +0100
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Anybody on AIM
* taliesin the storyteller said on 2004-12-03 17:17:38 +0100
> * Benct Philip Jonsson said on 2004-10-22 19:01:15 +0200
> > Is anybody on this list also on AIM --
> > and in the CET time zone would be nice!
>
> Until today I was on AIM as "kaleissin", but after getting in touch
> yesterday with several of the ppl that replied to this thread in
> October, that account is now suspended!?
I see today that a large number of AIMers have been suspended due to a
mistake from AOL, and that things should be fixed by monday. *phew*! I
hope that is the cause in my case and that I get to be "me" again soon!
t.
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Message: 9
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:59:28 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: German style orthography
Quoting "Pascal A. Kramm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 17:22:03 +0100, Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
> >On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 08:13:49 -0800, bob thornton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
> >> Question: How is /s/ represented in German as of now?
>
> /s/ is either represented by s (before consonants) or by � (at the end of a
> word or compound). "ss" was originally always /ss/ (two s sounds), but since
> the German spelling got viciously raped by the "spelling reform", *some* �
> are supposed to be written "ss" now, while only representing a single "s"
> sound.
With the slight complication that most Standardesque versions of German,
including the traditional prescriptive language ('B�hnenausprache') and the
Duden pronunciation, do not distinguish 'tween single and geminate /s/. The
"vicious rape" may have made things trickier for you - for most it is a
simplification.
(That's to say, a simplification of the actual rules; for those who've memorized
which words have 's' and which '�' it's of course a bother relearn.)
> >Since word-initial |s| is always /z/ in German,
>
> That's not correct. There is *no* distinction made for being word-initial.
> The distinctions made are "s before vowel" (which is always /z/), "s before
> consonant except p, t" (which is always /s/) and "s before p, t" (which is
> always /S/). All of this regardless of position in the word.
This, alas, is no longer true in the age of Neudeutsch - sufficient numbers of
speakers retain initial [s] in loans like _Sex_ ([sEks], contrasting with
_sechs_ [zEks]) that Duden recognizes it.
Andreas
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Message: 10
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 02:35:44 -0800
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Coastlines
And then there's the super obsessive "let's make an overhead shot of
an island we create in paint then photoshop and then terragen" way:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v377/Doobieous/tests/islandsteps.jpg
The left shows the topographic map I made of a hypothetical island. I
then took that and photoshopped it so the edges were blurred between
the bands of color were blended. Then I imported that into a program
called "Terragen" which creates photorealistic (mostly) landscapes,
added "foliage", "sand", water, and then made it look like an island
within a lagoon. I changed it so it would be an overhead shot, and you
can see the final result at the right of the picture. Terragen
automatically loads its terrain files in grayscale so I cut the
middleman out and just did it in shades of gray.
--
You can turn away from me
but there's nothing that'll keep me here you know
And you'll never be the city guy
Any more than I'll be hosting The Scooby Show
Scooby Show - Belle and Sebastian
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Message: 11
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 22:33:57 +1100
From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: partial letter replacement in languages?
On 10 Dec 2004, at 6.08 pm, Ray Brown wrote:
> On Thursday, December 9, 2004, at 09:25 , Philip Newton wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 02:48:04 +0200, Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>
>>> is there a term for when a language is evolving/being changed, &
>>> replaces
>>> one letter with another (ie, /d/ becomes /t/) in nearly all
>>> instances...yet
>>> there are still words in the resultant language which retain (to
>>> continue
>>> the example) /d/ ?
>>
>> I don't know a term for it,
>
> Nor I - I do not think there is. Sound changes follow regular
> patterns, so
> the most appropriate tem is "exception".
>
>> but just wanted to note that some
>> instances of this come when there are two (nearly) concurrent sound
>> changes such that, say, /d/ becomes /t/ while, say, /D/ becomes /d/ --
>> so all or most original /d/'s disappeared but there are still /d/'s in
>> the resulting language that used to be a different sound.
>
> Yes, but that is not what I understand Rodlox to mean. Where, to use
> his
> example, /d/ generally becomes /t/, but there are a few cases where the
> original sound is kept, there will IMO be only two reasons:
> - in certain environments the change is not made. For example in French
> -tion is normally pronounced /sjO`/, but after a preceding /s/, the
> /t/ is
> not changed to /s/, so _question_ /kEstjO`/.
> - a word is taken into the standard language from a dialect where the
> change did not happen.
I think your assumption isn't quite right. There's all the SBrE-based
dialects (like mine & RP) that have things like pass vs mass, or the
standard English worn vs worm, sworn vs sword and selected dialects
(like mine & at least some American) that usually modify /&/ before
voiced elements, but don't in ablauted forms of verbs like ran and
swam. Also most Melburnians at least pronounce 'gone' with a vowel not
found in any other word, which perhaps represents an exception of the
rising of the or/aw-vowel.
These all make sense in terms of Roger's statement that sound changes
proceed word-by-word.
--
Tristan.
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Message: 12
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 23:03:44 +1100
From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
On 10 Dec 2004, at 6.02 pm, Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)
wrote:
> Tristan Mc Leay wrote:
>
>> Well, here's my crappy recording, made from on my hardware digital
>> music player. Best of a band bunch I'm afraid... MP3 at 96 kbps to
>> satisfy you ;) (I spose given that it's mono I might as well make it
>> 48, but that's too much like hard work.)
>>
>> http://thecartographers.net/sounds/vowels.mp3
>> I arbitrarily chose to use the 'holly' pronunciation of 'holy' but I
>> could just as well have used 'wholly'. Any difference between 'holly'
>> and 'holy' is purely random and nothing should be read into it.
>
> If I decide to make a permanent web page about Australian speech
> (which I am contemplating), can I use yours as well? Just to show some
> of the variety of idiolects that are all equally Australian?
Most certainly, as long as you give me a link if you make it :) (Not a
link back, just so I can see the site.)
> Here's my comments, in order from most to least remarkable:
>
> * By far the biggest surprise was your markedly diphtongonal nucleus
> of "steam", which you pronounced [steim]. I would be almost
> certain to mis-hear this as "stain".
I have occasionally been uncertain as to whether an American was saying
a word with the ee- or ai-vowel when a word was said out of context,
but my disclaimer here is that when I'm speaking carefully, the vowels
I classify as diphthongs tend to get _more_ diphthongal, and the vowels
I classify as long monophthongs tend to get _more_ monophthongal. Not a
conscious decision on my part, but all the clearest, most
interesting-to-listen-to lecturers (etc.) I've had have done similar
things. Part of the reason I call the ee-vowel a diphthong and the
ear-vowel a (long) monophthong in spite of the conventional
distinction.
I think you calling it [ei] is a bit of an exaggeration though. And
certainly whereas /&i/ sounds and feels like an a-vowel, /@i/ feels
more like an i-vowel than an e-vowel, in spite of the orthography. And
I certainly don't feel inclined to borrow foreign /ei/ as anything but
/&i/. But an appropriate chainshift (ai>Ai, ei>&i, ii>ei), undoing half
the work of the GVS.
> * Pronouncing "holy" as "holly" is certainly strange, although
> pronouncing it as "wholly" is not - I suspect that I am in
> something like a 30/70 minority (that's just a guess).
In SA possibly :) I tend to use the 'holly' pronunciation in 'Holy
Spirit' and the 'wholly' one in other contexts ('Holy Catholic and
Apostolic Church'). I think the Catholic church should be glad English
is spelt historically, not phonetically. On the other hand, I don't
know how they'd feel about being wholly Catholic, instead of Holy
Catholic.
> * Things that are certainly unusual from my Adelaide perspective but
> perfectly believable as idiolects include your monophthogonal
> "stare" and your schwa-avoiding ends of "steer/tour". Also your
> very low vowel in "storm".
I don't really know about the back vowels---I've never been comfortable
in calling them anything so I just usually use the ones I've seen given
for Australian English, even when I'm not entirely sure they match.
> * The way you pronounce "tourist" would place you with a minority of
> speakers, but that minority is not terribly small, although in my
> experience most members of that minority are older speakers (think
> grandmothers).
I've heard all sorts of pronunciations of it. I have no idea if mine is
normal or usually from a particular group or what. Most discussions of
Australian vowels that I've come across run away from the original /U@/
vowel; it varies way too much idiolectally to say anything about it
apparently.
> * I do not think your pronunciation of "our" is markedly different
> from mine.
Really? You certainly have a further-back/lower starting point then me,
enough it sounds British. Maybe yours really is a diphthong and I'm
being confused by the starting point, or mine's phonetically
monophthongal and I'm hearing my own pronunciation wrongly... I
dunno...
> I'm interested in the opinion of non-Australians on the list. Do all
> you Americans and Europeans etc out there find any of the differences
> between Tristan's idiolect and mine to be remarkable (if so, which),
> and does one sound any closer than the other to your mental image of
> an Australian accent? (Obviously, intonation should be completely
> ignored; the question is about vowel quality.)
To which, on 10 Dec 2004, at 6.42 pm, Joe replied:
> They sound near identical to me, actually. If I concentrate, I can
> pick
> out individual differences, but appart from that, your accents sound
> similar. And Tristan's does sound slightly more stereotypically
> Austrialian, but if I was to guess, I would know your Australian-ness.
> If you like, I'll record my accent, see what you think (British).
Puts everything in context, doesn't it? :) I'd be interesting in
hearing your pronunciations, Joe.
--
Tristan.
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Message: 13
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 13:19:26 +0100
From: Rene Uittenbogaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: vowels: are they necessary?
Steven Williams wrote:
>> Interesting. How are clusters like /s zdranat/ (I'm
>> making up a Russian-sounding word here, because the
>> only Russian I know comes from old spy movies)
>> pronounced?
Stephen Mulraney wrote:
> In these cases, _s_ becomes _so_. E.g. "so mnoy".
> Similary with other prepostions (all these words
> are prepositions). Indeed, even prepositions like _ob_
> sometimes become _obo_. I can't seem to find the
> situations in which the extra "o"s appear.
IIRC, the extra |o| only appears before certain consonant
clusters, most notably |vs-| and |mn-|:
vo vsyom "in everything"
so vsyem "with everything"
ko mnye "to me"
so mnoy "with me"
If a word happens to start with the same consonant as the
preposition, then that alone is not reason enough to add |o|.
To make a distinction, I believe that the consonant is
pronounced long.
v voskresen'ye "on Sunday" pronounced as [v:]-
v vodu "into the water"
s sestroy "with the sister" pronounced as [s:]-
k kafe "towards the cafe" pronounced as [k:]- ?
Ren�
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Message: 14
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 12:23:37 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Fwd: Greek definite article (was Re: Addendum: a holy spirit)
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Tim Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
At 12:35 PM 12/4/2004 -0500, Sally Caves wrote:
>This is most interesting. I'm also interested in what looks like a
>doubling of the definite article in Mt 12:32 tou pneumatos tou
>hagiou? The spirit the holy? It I'm right, that's quite some
>definition! Is this common in Greek?
>>As it happens, this is something I've been wondering about lately.
>>I seem to remember reading somewhere, years ago, that in Greek,
>>when you have a noun with a definite article and an adjective, it
>>works something like this:
>>If the adjective is attributive (modifying the noun), the unmarked
>>order is article - adjective - noun (_to hagion pneuma_, to put the
>>above example in the nominative). The adjective-noun order can be
>>reversed, to put extra (contrastive?) emphasis on the adjective
>>("the HOLY spirit", as opposed to some other spirit), but if so,
>>the adjective gets its own article (_to pneuma to hagion_). If the
>>adjective appears to the right of the noun without its own article
>>(_to pneuma hagion_), it's understood as predicative rather than
>>attributive ("the spirit is holy"); likewise if the adjective goes
>>before the article-noun pair (_hagion to pneuma_, "holy is the
>>spirit" or something like that).
>>This struck me as a really nifty and elegant arrangement. But is it
>>correct? I can't remember where I read it, and I haven't found any
>>reference to this anywhere else. I'm starting to wonder if I
>>dreamed it, or just made it up in a moment of conlanging revery and
>>then somehow got it confused with Greek. Ray, or any other Greek
>>scholars out there, can you confirm or deny that Greek actually
>>works this way? And if it does, is it all periods of Greek (and if
>>not, which one(s))?
- Tim
For what its' worth:
Goodwin and Gluck, "Greek Grammar," p. 208-9: "The noun with the
article may be followed by the adjective with the article repeated.
The first article is sometimes omitted. In these cases the noun has
greater emphasis than [when the adjective stands between the article
and the noun].
"o anhr o sofos, sometimes anhr o sofos _the wise man_ ( but _not_ o
anhr sofos)."
p. 210: "When an adjective either precedes the article, or follows
directly a noun which has an article, it is always a predicate
adjective....
"o anhr sofos or sofos o anhr (sc. estin) _the man is wise_, or _wise
is the man_."
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Message: 15
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 07:30:32 -0500
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
Tristan Mc Leay scripsit:
> I have occasionally been uncertain as to whether an American was saying
> a word with the ee- or ai-vowel when a word was said out of context,
That runs both ways, of course, as in the sad tale of the Australian in
the American restaurant. He orders coffee, which arrives with the rest
of the meal; when he repeatedly tells the waitress he wants it later,
it keeps coming back with more cream in it....
> >They sound near identical to me, actually. If I concentrate, I can pick
> >out individual differences, but appart from that, your accents sound
> >similar. And Tristan's does sound slightly more stereotypically
> >Austrialian, but if I was to guess, I would know your Australian-ness.
> >If you like, I'll record my accent, see what you think (British).
>
> Puts everything in context, doesn't it? :) I'd be interesting in
> hearing your pronunciations, Joe.
Furriners (broadly considered) never hear regional accents properly, anyway.
I know some varieties of Cultivated sound somewhat British (every time I
see Nick Nicholas, he sounds more RP-ish to my ear), but I'm always
flabbergasted when other Americans can't tell Broad from RP!
--
If you have ever wondered if you are in hell, John Cowan
it has been said, then you are on a well-traveled http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
road of spiritual inquiry. If you are absolutely http://www.reutershealth.com
sure you are in hell, however, then you must be [EMAIL PROTECTED]
on the Cross Bronx Expressway. --Alan Feuer, NYTimes, 2002-09-20
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Message: 16
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 12:54:54 +0000
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Sk�lansk - History and Babel text
Pascal A. Kramm wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 20:08:49 +0000, Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>Ray Brown wrote:
>>
>>The joy of the archives:
>>
>>http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0308d&L=conlang&F=&S=&P=5853
>
> Pretty much what I had in mind. At only 9% for VSO, a "rare" is well
> deserved here.
Some estimates say upwards on 15%, and at least one major indoeuropean
language group that they would have been in close contact with is VSO,
hence my point.
K.
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Message: 17
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 00:49:28 +1100
From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
On 10 Dec 2004, at 11.30 pm, John Cowan wrote:
> Tristan Mc Leay scripsit:
>
>> I have occasionally been uncertain as to whether an American was
>> saying
>> a word with the ee- or ai-vowel when a word was said out of context,
>
> That runs both ways, of course, as in the sad tale of the Australian in
> the American restaurant. He orders coffee, which arrives with the rest
> of the meal; when he repeatedly tells the waitress he wants it later,
> it keeps coming back with more cream in it....
You love that story :) Sometimes I wonder if it's true, after it came
back the first time I think you'd say you don't want it till after
you've finished or something... But in any case, that's ai-vowels and
igh-vowels, not ee-vowels and ai-vowels. I don't think I've ever had
difficulty with Americans' igh-vowel, but maybe I have.
>>> They sound near identical to me, actually. If I concentrate, I can
>>> pick
>>> out individual differences, but appart from that, your accents sound
>>> similar. And Tristan's does sound slightly more stereotypically
>>> Austrialian, but if I was to guess, I would know your
>>> Australian-ness.
>>> If you like, I'll record my accent, see what you think (British).
>>
>> Puts everything in context, doesn't it? :) I'd be interesting in
>> hearing your pronunciations, Joe.
>
> Furriners (broadly considered) never hear regional accents properly,
> anyway.
> I know some varieties of Cultivated sound somewhat British (every time
> I
> see Nick Nicholas, he sounds more RP-ish to my ear), but I'm always
> flabbergasted when other Americans can't tell Broad from RP!
Well, as I've said, Cultivated sounds more than somewhat British to my
ear too. (With his accent, Alexahnder Downer is a poor choice for
Australian foreign minister.) Cultivated is really just the form of RP
spoken in Australia from my perspective, though I'm sure real
RP-speakers will find glaring similarities between Cultivated and
mine... But in combination with your observation it only proves the
point: Cultivated is a form of RP :) And of course, the entire point
behind Cultivated Australian is to sound British, so it's no surprise.
Or perhaps:
... ...
/ \
Australian RP
/ \ / \
Broad General CultAuE Real RP
--
Tristan.
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Message: 18
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 00:21:26 +1030
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Coastlines and a minor complaint
Roger Mills wrote:
> It is neat, and I don't want to rain on the parade, or pontificate...but
> there's a couple problems IMO.
Absolutely - it's a quick and dirty method. And therefore ought to be
judged in its capacity as a quick and dirty method. Effectiveness per
unit effort, rather than effectiveness absolute.
For serious island drawing, you need rivers and mountain ranges, etc,
and my method has nought to say about those.
I was in my final school year when I came up with it.
Adrian.
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Message: 19
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 01:03:21 +1030
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
Tristan Mc Leay wrote, quoting myself:
> > If I decide to make a permanent web page about Australian speech
> > (which I am contemplating), can I use yours as well? Just to show some
> > of the variety of idiolects that are all equally Australian?
>
> Most certainly, as long as you give me a link if you make it :) (Not a
> link back, just so I can see the site.)
How do you like this? http://web.netyp.com/member/dragon/say/vowels.htm
In the future I may add quotes from this very discussion, in order to
give people an idea of what to listen for. But are there any more
parenthical notes you would like to be added now?
> > * I do not think your pronunciation of "our" is markedly different
> > from mine.
>
> Really? You certainly have a further-back/lower starting point then me,
> enough it sounds British. Maybe yours really is a diphthong and I'm
> being confused by the starting point, or mine's phonetically
> monophthongal and I'm hearing my own pronunciation wrongly... I
> dunno...
I can only pick the most subtle of differences. Not enough to be
remarkable. There would probably be more difference in a sentence
where "our" was stressed, such as: "Their main concern is to save the
country whereas our main concern is to save the world".
Tristan wrote in reply to Joe:
> Puts everything in context, doesn't it? :) I'd be interesting in
> hearing your pronunciations, Joe.
Certainly. My prediction is that it'll remind me of some British
friend or other, of whom I have several. :-)
John Cowan wrote:
> Furriners (broadly considered) never hear regional accents properly, anyway.
> I know some varieties of Cultivated sound somewhat British (every time I
> see Nick Nicholas, he sounds more RP-ish to my ear), but I'm always
> flabbergasted when other Americans can't tell Broad from RP!
I think of my speech as being the same accent as most of my peers,
with obviously a few idiolectal variations as everybody has. My
considered opinion is that my speech is definitely within the spectrum
of General Australian, whatever Tristan might say. :-) :-)
(I'll try and get another opinion from Melbournian relatives of mine...)
There's an old joke (sourced in the old TV series GNW) that a "Downer"
is defined as a vague feeling of depression when forced to admit one's
nationality whilst overseas.
Adrian.
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Message: 20
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:50:48 -0500
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Austrian/German "thanks"?
On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:42:27 +0100, Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Quoting "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
>> On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 23:42:39 +0200, Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> > are words such as /danke/ more German or Austrian or some other region?
>>
>> I guess standard German uses _danke_ in all regions. In more dialectal
>> varieties, the word _danksch�n_ may be common in certain regions. In
>> Swiss dialects, the French loan _merci_ is more common (at least in
>> Western Swiss German), pronounced /'mers:i/, though you didn't ask about
>> Switzerland. I doubt that Swiss people would use _merci_ in Swiss
>> standard German.
>
>I'd not presume to know exactly where to draw the line between Swiss
>Standard German and very watered-down dialect, but I've heard _merci_ in
>variants I can with little trouble understand.
Then I must be wrong, since Swiss German isn't used in "watered-down" forms
(unlike in the rest of the German speaking regions, where a complex system
of more or less dialectal varieties can be used depending on the situation).
It's the Swiss standard German that may vary, from speaker to speaker
depending on the teacher they had or whether they were for a time in
Germany/Austria. Some may even use different varieties of Swiss standard
German when they are together with Germans/Austrians or with Swiss.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
j. 'mach' wust
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Message: 21
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 06:45:50 -0800
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 17:32:32 +1030, Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating
Dragon) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'm interested in the opinion of non-Australians on the list. Do all
> you Americans and Europeans etc out there find any of the differences
> between Tristan's idiolect and mine to be remarkable (if so, which),
> and does one sound any closer than the other to your mental image of
> an Australian accent? (Obviously, intonation should be completely
> ignored; the question is about vowel quality.)
They sound very similar to me, with only minor differences, although
the most pronounced is Adrian seems to have a much stronger diphthong
than Tristan. It's also more "musical" to me.
Adrian's seems to have a more "typical" (at least what I think is
typical) of an Aussie accent, while Tristan's seems a lot more
flattened.. But if you asked at gunpoint i'd say both still sound
typically Australian.
Heh...... i'm thinking maybe I should parody the California accent and
record that! (i'd have to practice.... it's harder to do it when
reading something like a list of words.)
--
You can turn away from me
but there's nothing that'll keep me here you know
And you'll never be the city guy
Any more than I'll be hosting The Scooby Show
Scooby Show - Belle and Sebastian
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Message: 22
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 10:03:10 -0500
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: German style orthography
On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:59:28 +0100, Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>This, alas, is no longer true in the age of Neudeutsch - sufficient numbers
>of speakers retain initial [s] in loans like _Sex_ ([sEks], contrasting
>with _sechs_ [zEks]) that Duden recognizes it.
What a surprising minimal pair! I also have initial /s/ in certain loans,
e.g. _Cidre, Cedille, City_, but certainly not in _Sex_ (which to me is
homophonous to _sechs_ "six"), but now that you mention it I think I
remember I've heard this pronunciation on the media from Germany. I've been
very surprised when I heard initial /s/ in the name _Soonwald_ (a region in
the Hunsr�ck 'mountains').
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
j. 'mach' wust
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Message: 23
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 10:13:32 -0500
From: Geoff Horswood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Babel Text in Xinkutlan
1. ehu enamutl tlaxaq nai utlil acil dzoilab sacunil.
2. enpilen itl senllesirikatl kuarasuan oronil cinaritlil, a pentepaludika
ma kemutil.
3. enutlika ke: "ehu, na diromec napekil sedidzugudecil." enulika
tlepiluz napekil, a xuriluan hodzil.
4. kei enutlika ke: "ehu, na dinapenec tapanil xulilab taqanuanil.
kaqinana didzurasec ma dazuril seditupunixec cer tlaxaqilitl.
5. la enken satel ututl ilapenai tapanilana xulilab senilnapen itlil.
6. enutl ututl ilapenai: "udzarika sa kal- sutl utlil sacunil xin ac-
rokapatlika mula, roceiben cer ita.
7. "ehu, na roracetsatla utlil satel, kaqinana seroralutlenika cer ke."
8. keqinana entupun ututl ilapenai ikal kemutuz tlaxaqitl nai. enlotika
seinapen tapanil.
9. kuruz imdzura tapan beibal- kemut enracetsa ututl ilapenai utlil
tlaxaquz nai. kemutuz entupun ututl ilapenai ikal tlaxaqitl nai.
Gloss:
1. now LPT-H-speak world all language-P one-P word-P-with G-common-P.
2. LPT-find person G-LPT-migrate-3pl(an)-in east-to plain-P Shinar-in-P,
also PF-LPT-dwell-CAU-3pl(an) RF there-P.
3. LPT-speak-3pl(an) MT: "now, let NFT-make-1pl(inc) brick-P G-NFT-bake-
CAU-1pl(inc)-P." LPT-use-3pl(an) stone-P-from brick-P, also mortar-P-to
tar-P
4. then LPT-speak-3pl(an) MT: "now, let NFT-build-1pl(inc) citadel-P tower-
P-with heaven-to-P. this_way-at NFT-be_named-APS-1pl(inc) RF name-P G-NFT-
scatter-PSS-1pl(inc) not world-P-in.
5. but LPT-see G-descend god creator citadel-P-at tower-P-with G-LPT-C-
build person-P.
6. LPT-speak god creator: "RPT-begin-3pl(an) if this - G-speak language-P
G-common-P nation one - IFT-intend-3pl(an) anything, IFT-impossible not 3pl
(in).
7. "now, let IFT-mix-2rh language-P G-descend, this_way-at G-IFT-
understand-3pl(an) not MT."
8. that_way-at LPT-scatter god creator 3pl(an)-P there-from world-in all.
LPT-cease-3pl(an) G-LPT-build* citadel-P
9. this_reason-from DPT-be_named citadel Babel - there LPT-mix god creator
language-P world-from all. there-from LPT-scatter god creator 3pl(an)-P
world-in all.
*se- (G) + en- (LPT) + n-initial = sein-
P patientive
LPT Legendary Past tense
DPT Distant Past
RPT Recent Past
IFT Immediate Future
NFT Near Future
G gerundive
PF perfective
C continuous
H habitual
APS antipassive
PSS passive
CAU causative
RF reflexive
MT mutual (each other)
3pl(in) 3rd person plural (inanimate)
3pl(an) 3rd person plural (animate)
2rh 2nd person (royal honorific)
1pl(inc) 1st person plural (inclusive)
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Message: 24
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 07:14:23 -0800
From: JC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
> I'm interested in the opinion of non-Australians on
the list. Do all
> you Americans and Europeans etc out there find any
of the differences
> between Tristan's idiolect and mine to be remarkable
(if so, which),
> and does one sound any closer than the other to your
mental image of
> an Australian accent? (Obviously, intonation should
be completely
> ignored; the question is about vowel quality.)
You both sound Australian to my US ears, though I
admit that I've never actually spoken to someone from
Australia so I have little but TV to judge from.
Adrian's accent sounds more British, though still
recognisably Australian, and Tristan's sounds more
like those TV accents.
Adrian's 2nd "our" sounds like Tristan's "our" but the
1st one doesn't; the 1st one sounds British and the
2nd one Australian. Reading the sentence myself, I do
the same sort of thing as Adrian, though his vowels
are broader and I say the "r" at the end.
Listening to these, the things I hear as markers for
Australian accents are the broad vowels, lack of the
"r" sound, and more exaggerated dipthongs, or
dipthongs where I would say a single vowel sound.
There are British accents that sound Australian to me.
JC
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Message: 25
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 18:55:59 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Conlangs in the movies
what about Krakozhian from the movie _The Terminal_? was that a real
language, or did they invent it? *curious*
----- Original Message -----
From: Thomas R. Wier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 8:10 AM
Subject: Re: Conlangs in the movies
> From: Thomas Leigh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > I just got back from seeing "Blade: Trinity", and there's Esperanto in
> > the movie!
>
> There are actually whole movies in Esperanto. "La Eta Knabino",
> which has mostly Swiss cast and an Iraqi director, is one, and there
> are at least 12 that contain some Esperanto. More to be found:
> There are not surprisingly even more in Klingon:
> Found this a couple weeks ago looking for Georgian movies (more than
> 594 of them, shockingly for a nation of 5 million souls). I find it
> rather sad that there are only 5 movies containing any Navaho,
> which makes the Onion article of some years back depressingly accurate.
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