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Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 19:22:08 +0200
Message-ID: <e6e140ec0906021022q62fa7e7et8d1251d6b17f653d@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Pronunciation: a major problem in 	spreading lojban
From: Ivo Doko <ivo.doko@gmail.com>
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
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I would also like to add to this discussion that there are number of
languages in which pronunciation of consonant clusters is resolved
with schwa, although it's unconscious and, in most languages, the
presence of schwa is not represented in the orthography.

For example, in Croatian, [r] (alveolar trill) is said to be a
consonant if it's not in-between two other consonants, in which case
it's treated as a vowel. What actually happens is that [r] itself does
not magically transform into a vowel when it comes in-between two
other consonants, but instead a schwa is pronounced before or even at
the same time as the alveolar trill. So, for example, the word "prvak"
(champion) is actually pronounced /pərˈvaːk/ although the schwa is not
in any way represented in the spelling of the word and, actually,
there is absolutely no way of writing schwa itself in Croatian.

That is also very interesting because Croatian has a phonetic spelling
and the pronunciation is perfectly unambiguous, except for when it
comes to schwa, which is never even mentioned when you learn Croatian.
The reason for that is, I believe, because it's presumed that the
speaker of the language is himself able to judge when a consonant
cluster is unpronounceable without adding schwa somewhere in it. I
suppose there are other languages too whose speakers unconsciously
resolve consonant clusters with schwa even though it's not actually
represented by the orthography of the language in question. That has
to be taken into account, too.