Why the french prefer spanish instead of english

greg   Monday, June 06, 2005, 05:52 GMT
Thanx you both. (I know it's the umpteenth time you're repeating the vocalic inventory...)
Kirk   Monday, June 06, 2005, 06:12 GMT
<<Thanx you both. (I know it's the umpteenth time you're repeating the vocalic inventory...)>>

No prob :) It's actually kinda fun for me to do, because I love phonetics/phonology and regional variations related to that stuff. Writing all that stuff out also challenges me to think about how I actually pronounce things--sometimes I surprise myself. I've been realizing how different regional dialects can be compared to the broad, basic transcription styles we learned in phonetics class. Once you get even a little bit narrower some interesting things start popping up.
Travis   Monday, June 06, 2005, 06:36 GMT
Also, it sometimes makes one wonder what is really phonemic and what is really phonetic. For example, what various things "should be" phonemically can be quite different, in practice, from how they're realized. For example, the production of novel diphthongs by various means, such as the vocalization of certain consonants in certain positions (as in the name of the city "Milwaukee", which is pronounced formally here as /mIl"wOki/ --> [mIU."wO.ki] with the rather novel diphthong [IU]) or by elision, as in my examples of "any", "many", and "twenty" spoken informally here. While such isn't generally considered phonemic, in some words, such as "any", such diphthongs are used to the point in the dialect here that they could potentially, in the future, actually become phonemes unto themselves; so when does something stop being just "merely a result of phonemic transformations" and actually a phoneme per se?

The only thing is that if one "allowed" phonemes such as [IU] and [EI] to be considered phonemic, one would also have to consider the possibility for, say, phonemically nasal vowels, for example, so hence, in the end, it becomes easier to just consider such things to be the results of how things are realized, and view them as not phonemically existing, even if the formal phonemic representation might end up being quite distanced from the practical realization.

I find such to often be the case in my own dialect, as such is necessary to explain vowel length, which isn't strictly contrastive but often is noticably "wrong" if not realized right, in many cases without having to resort to actually introducing phonemic vowel length. In many cases, it results in having to using consonants which are differently voiced phonemically, than they are realized, and also which often act in concert with another adjacent consonant (which it usually only differs with with respect to voicing) almost like a geminate, even though geminates do not phonemically exist in the dialect which I speak. In many cases, it's almost like one is trying to figure out the "right" phonemic representation to *explain* the surface representation in quesiton; due to such phonemic representation being purely abstract, what stops one from simply redefining said phonemic representation when such is more convenient for accurately "explaining" the surface representations at hand?
Kirk   Monday, June 06, 2005, 06:36 GMT
Oh, I just realized some of the very stuff we were talking about I touched upon recently on the unilang forum, where you can use IPA (if you have firefox as your browser you should be able to read the IPA, for some reason this site's IPA doesn't work with IE). Anyway, if you wanna see some of the stuff I was talking about in real IPA, here it is:

http://home.unilang.org/main/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5980&highlight=
javier   Monday, June 06, 2005, 06:58 GMT
To Travis

" I think not. The English do not "own" English, just because Modern English as we know it originated in England, and there is nothing that makes their English any more "correct" than my own English, for example. To me, Great Britain is just an island in the North Sea where the same language just happens to be spoken as that which is natively spoken here today, for historical reasons. I have no allegiance whatsoever to English English, and see no reasons at all to speak English like the English happen to speak it today. Now, why should I speak English like them, besides some unfounded ideas of "correctness" which have nothing to do with linguistic reality on your part?"

The English and the American "own" English because it's their BUSINESS. If I wanna work in a good job, I need a upper-intermediate certificate or Cambridge First Certificate, or a Trinity College certificate, and where does the certificate come from? from Japan? from Spain?
Travis   Monday, June 06, 2005, 07:05 GMT
javier, I was saying the above as someone who natively speaks American English, and who was rather, well, pissed off by the suggestion that I should at all, for whatever reason, speak English like the English, and that their English is somehow "correct". I really, really do not like the suggestion that I should speak /any/ sort of English besides that which I natively speak. You obviously missed the point of what I was trying to say above, it seems.
Lali   Monday, June 06, 2005, 12:58 GMT
It's a just pragmatic issue...
Lali   Monday, June 06, 2005, 13:02 GMT
Why the french prefer spanish instead of english?
Because French and Spanish are very similar!!!! Just as simple as that! They are both highly inflected langauges, they have similar sounds (although nasals and the French /r/ do not exist in Spanish) and they have the same origin...
Josh   Monday, June 06, 2005, 19:19 GMT
Spanish and english are good
greg   Tuesday, June 07, 2005, 19:16 GMT
Bump.
nico   Tuesday, June 07, 2005, 19:33 GMT
Bump too