Random Babbling Post #108

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Consonant-Vowel combinations create different sounds depending on the language of origin. English is a mongrol langauge, so weird pronounciations are pretty normal

Then you get American English where they decide to remove a whole bunch of letters and make an h sound optional in words beginning with the letter! Honestly...

 

I do! HHHHHonestly!!!!

 

It has a light inflection, not particularly a consonant sound, but things like herb and hotel, really does quite damage a word.

 

In french, the "h" is silent. Hôtel is pronounced ôtel, herbe is pronounced erbe. The funny thing is the french language institution one day woke up and realized people were doing liaisons with the second letter, and forgetting the "h" althogether. Ex. The hotels is "Les hôtels", but we were making a "z" sound liaison between "les" and "ô" as we would with any other word starting with a vowel. So now, we can't make a liaison, even though the "h" is silent, so it sounds just weird...

 

Wasn't the liaison started in the first place so that you wouldn't have two vowels sounds in a row? I thought it was based purely on the phonetics and not on the spelling of the words. Same reason English has "a" and "an".

 

It is about spelling. The liaison is between to vowels, not between two vowel sounds. In theory, the pronounciation always follows closely the written word. Like Kitrax said at the start of this mini-topic, "sure" should not be pronounced "shure", or it would have been written that way.

In practice, we have a whole lot more liaisons. Now, we can't make liaisons with an "h" since it's a consonant, even though it's not pronounced. "Les hôtels" is now pronounced "Lè ôtel" instead of "Lèzôtel". We make a massacre of thr written words when we talk. There's also diphtongs (different regional pronunciations who distort the words). For example, in Québec we add a "z" sound when an "i" or "u" follows a "t" or "d" : dîner is pronounced "dzîner". But that's not the case in other french speaking cultures.

We learned a lot of word pronounciation in theater, so I have the eye for it now...

 

Hey! What's wrong with powertrips?

 

Only if you assume that writing follows phonetics, which not a single Western language does, and most certainly not English (just check all the differences between American and British English in writing). I think French is a little better about this - sure many words written differently are pronounced the same, but at least when you're reading you have a reasonable idea of how the word should be pronounced. English is a nightmare. Different letters? may or may not be pronounced the same. Same letter in different words? may or may not be pronounced completely different. Sometimes the same letter present twice in the same word will be pronounced differently! Trying to speak words that you've never heard pronounced before (or haven't looked up the phonetics of) is guaranteed to make people look at you funny.

 

Oh, nothing.... when you're the one doing it. It sucks when you're on the bottom...

 

See...this is why we need an adults only forum...so many comments to make, so many moderators to stop me!

 

Yep, I agree Silvery. I always wanted to talk about my fantasy of a stripper wearing nothing but a Blu-dragon lady costume hovering over me, swinging her...oops, nevermind!

 

Yes, that's exactly the reason for the accentsin the french language. e, é, è, ê, ë are all pronounced differently. That's another reason why, in french at least, you must follow the spelling. It will tell you everything you have to know (there are exceptions of course, but not a lot).

People say french is hard to learn. Yet, it is not that bad. Yes, there are no real indication of the gender in words (as opposed to italian where feminin words end with an "e" or an "a" and masculin words end with an "o" or an "i"). But once you get past it, it's not that hard.

And I could add several comments about that as well...

 

Our newborn is finally sleeping in the crib. Last night was the 1st night since she was born that the wife and I both were able to sleep more than 3 hours in a row. Finally!

 

WOOO! Go Blades!

 

Eh... how strictly do you want writing to follow phonetics?

If down to the accents, then yeah, none do that.

But in Serbian, for example, one letter is one sound - always. You write exactly as you pronounce and read as it is written (as per Adelung) - meaning that all the letters are always the same and you can read a book in Serbian fairly well out loud (without understanding it though) after learning how to pronounce the 30 letters. Sandhi rules present are all included in the orthography.

Spelling in general basically doesn't exist in Serbian (for which I am quite grateful ) - assuming one's ears work.

I think there are a few more languages like that around.

EDIT:
BTW, I suck at touch typing
Not that my usual typing is much better...

 

To quote Christopher Lloyd: BLAHBLEBLUBARRRGHHH *grumble* *grumble* BLARGH.

 

I appear to have scratched my eye