From rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Thu Aug 19 10:32:09 2004 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Thu, 19 Aug 2004 10:32:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rlpowell by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.34) id 1Bxqlk-0002Ty-Q6 for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Thu, 19 Aug 2004 10:32:09 -0700 Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 10:32:08 -0700 To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Anyone there? Message-ID: <20040819173208.GR5127@chain.digitalkingdom.org> References: <20040819072528.GC5127@chain.digitalkingdom.org> <20040819081302.7510.qmail@web52006.mail.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040819081302.7510.qmail@web52006.mail.yahoo.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040722i From: Robin Lee Powell X-archive-position: 701 X-Approved-By: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-original-sender: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-list: lojban-beginners On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 06:13:02PM +1000, Tristan Mc Leay wrote: > --- Robin Lee Powell wrote: > > On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 04:19:42PM +1000, Tristan Mc Leay wrote: > > > --- Robin Lee Powell wrote: > > > > > > > It's actually the lack of short 'i' that pisses me off. :-) > > > > > > Why is it that [I] isn't an allophone of /i/? > > You didn't answer this qn. Is it just random? Perhaps you don't know? > It's something that bugs me. Well, I sort of did. In my dialect, those sounds are so amazingly far apart that I find the idea of them being allophones rather bizarre. More importantly, it's used as a buffer vowel. You can insert short 'i' anywhere there's a consonant cluster than you can't pronounce (hence me Lojbanizing my name with rabn). > > > For most people in the world, they're close enough that it's hard > > > to distinguish anyway... (I'm a native English speaker, and out of > > > context, I find hearing [i] vs [I] difficult; [I] is many times > > > easier for me to produce than [i] though.) > > > > /me blinks. > > > > You find the "i" in "bit" hard to distinguish from the "ee" in > > "beet"? > > No, not at all. But the 'ee' in 'beet' is a diphthong IMD (starting > from something like [@] and ending at somewhere like [i]). The 'i' in > 'bit' is a short vowel. Wow. That doesn't resemble my dialect even a little. Can you give me an example of a word with [I] in it? I have difficulty imagining two sounds more easy to distinguish than [i] and [I], so this is a really wierd discussion for me. -Robin -- http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/ Reason #237 To Learn Lojban: "Homonyms: Their Grate!"