On Jan 29, 2005, at 10:08, Carol Adkinson wrote:
Pronunciation is a nightmare thing, isn't it.
I was 23 when I moved into an entirely English-speaking environment... Try *that* for size :) Thankfully, it was US-English, which *is* somewhat easier.
at least in Welsh (the oldest European language there is!) there isn't that problem!
The self-deceptions we practice in order to defend what's familiar *to us*... :)
Both Polish and German claim that, "what you see is what you hear". To an extent, it's true (more so than in either English or French). But you still need to know the "rules" of the particular language... If it weren't so, my maiden name (Przybyl, with the final "L " "crossed") would have been no mystery :) And nobody at all would have any trouble with the German conundrum of "ei" and "ie"... :)
And everyone would pronounce Roman Latin (I don't want to even *think* of the Medieval Latin - the "lingua franca" of the time) exctly the same way, which they do not...
Spelling in Welsh is easy, as all the words are spelled as they are
pronounced - but I have no doubt that, now I have gone into print saying
that, someone out there will let me know that that *isn't* correct!
Darn straight :) Welsh names (place and human) have me totally confounded... The LL combination (Lloyd)? And what about "Rhys"?
Pob hwyl, (Good wishes!)
OK... If you're even half-right, there are no traps for the unwary in "pob"; it ought to sound, more or less, like "bob", but with the initial consonant voiceless (I'll refrain from discussing the different amounts of "plosive force" which can change the sound of "p" <g>)...
"Hwyl", however, is *full* of booby traps :)
In Polish, each of the letters would be sounded out: h (as in: h-orn), w (as in: v-ine, but devoiced because of its context, hence: f, as in fly), y (as in: M-i-ck), l ("dark", as in be-ll). Altogether reminiscent of the Polish word "chwila" (moment), because we pronounce "ch" and "h" the same way these days (there used to be a difference, depending on the origin of the word, but it disappeared somewhere between WWI and WWII).
From an English perspective, it's far less simple... :) To begin with, "hw" is not considered to be two separate sounds (as it would be in Polish), but a sound cluster. And it may look mis-spelled to most modern users, but, throughout the first AD 800, it was a far more common spelling than the modern "wh" (who, where, when, while); in fact, the "hw" spelling was about the only thing about Old English that made sense to us Poles (and made Noah Chomsky's ideas about a language - burried in subcionscious but common to all humanity - a viable possibility. Maybe <g>)...
The "y" isn't clear cut, either. It's pronounced differently in "spy" than in "dandy" (the second is close to Polish), and the difference is enormous. Thankfully, although "l" also has two aspects to it ("clear", as in: clear, ladder etc, and "dark", as in "bell"), they're close enough so that, although one's immediately identified as foreign when using one instead of the other, one is understood at least.
So, Carol... Riddle me the - easy? - "hwyl"... :)
And, BTW, English *spelling* is no toy-box, either... :) I keep my Oxford Concise (and two versions of English/Polish, Polish/English, and a Roget, and several other dictionaries) within a hand's reach, on the shelf right above the 'puter, and consult them whenever I have doubts, which is constantly. Checked the pesky word in the subject line yesterday... Checked it, *again*, tonight... :) According to OC, it *still* has nothing to do with "nuns", but all to do with "nouns".
Functioning in your native language is always easy (though you may be "tagged" as undereducated through your spelling, if you write)... Try it in a foreign one :)
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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