From cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN Mon Feb 3 19:58:56 1992 Return-Path: Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.21.1 #21.19) id ; Mon, 3 Feb 92 19:58 EST Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA22462; Mon, 3 Feb 92 19:40:53 EST Received: from cunixf.cc.columbia.edu by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA19807; Mon, 3 Feb 92 19:21:06 -0500 Received: from cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu by cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (5.59/FCB) id AA04199; Mon, 3 Feb 92 19:19:15 EST Message-Id: <9202040019.AA04199@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU (IBM VM SMTP R1.2.1) with BSMTP id 8852; Mon, 03 Feb 92 19:17:53 EST Received: by CUVMB (Mailer R2.07) id 3330; Mon, 03 Feb 92 19:17:24 EST Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1992 10:44:08 GMT+1200 Reply-To: cbmvax!uunet!otago.ac.nz!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!chandley Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Handley Subject: Re: "y" X-To: LOJBAN%CUVMA.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann Status: RO Bruce writes > >Well, Chris, what languages do you know, so I can give an example? >It's close to the Scots vowel in "guid," and it is also the German >in "ueber," the French in "vu," the Dutch in "U" (as in "Dank U >wel!"), perhaps also used in Afrikaans, but I've never heard that >language spoken. It is not found in English at all, but if you put >yout tongue as if you were going to say "ee" as in "feet", but >purse your lips as if to say "oo," you'll make it. > > Bruce Thanks, but I am afraid that none of that helps! I know (South African) English and Afrikaans and can recognise all the sounds that Bruce refers to above. However, to my untrained ear, they are the samm os the long 'oo' sound as I said earlier. Not the short 'oo' sound as in 'book' or 'foot', but the longer sound of 'boon', 'soon', 'rune', 'cool', 'plume' etc. I am quite prepared to believe that a good linguist could distinguish between them, or even that some versions of English distinguish between them, but what I am saying is that in my ideolect, all those sound the same. Given that, I suspect that my version of the Loglan/Lojban 'u' is wrong, because all the examples I have seen of its sound map on to my perceptions of the above examples Chris Handley chandley@otago.ac.nz Dept of Computer Science Ph (+64) 3-479-8499 University of Otago Fax (+64) 3-479-8577 Dunedin, NZ