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Re: [bpfk] Question on {z} vs. {dz} and {ts}




On Sun, Jan 18, 2015 at 11:12 AM, Gleki Arxokuna <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:
 
  I am curious, do you know how well Mandarin speakers manage with Lojban's voiced plosives /b d g/?  Are [b d g] allophones of Mandarin /p t k/?

IMO, most of them can be rather semi-voiced than fully voiced except [g] probably. But how would they otherwise perceive [b] if not as [p]?

As for when we do need to express [p] we would probably have to always aspirate it to make Chinese Lojbanists understand more easily what we are saying.

And this is how I mapped the phonologies of the two languages. The result is that only [v] and [z] can pose problems.

Unfortunately I am afraid that it's a bit impractical to ask non-Mandarin speakers to aspirate their Lojban /p/s, and I don't think your one-to-one mappings of plosives (if I am reading them correctly) work as a good Lojban pronunciation guide for Mandarin speakers.  The mappings are appropriate for consistent transliterations of course, but in speech with people of different language backgrounds, the Mandarin /p/ - /pʰ/ contrast is effectively eliminated in Lojban.  Mandarin speakers will simply have to learn how to produce and hear voiced plosives.

If it's any consolation, Mandarin speakers are not alone.  Here is how some major languages treat distinctions in their plosives (as best I can tell), starting with the difficult cases:

- Two-way aspirated/plain distinction (no voice distinction): Mandarin, Cantonese

- Two-way partially-aspirated/partially-voiced distinction: English, Japanese*, German

- Two-way stiff-voiced/slack-voiced distinction: Javanese

- Three-way aspirated/plain/tense distinction (no voice distinction): Korean

- One series of plosives: Tamil


Here are the phonologies most compatible with Lojban plosives:

- Four-way aspirated/unaspirated + voiceless/voiced distinction: Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Telugu, Marathi, Urdu

- Two-way voiceless/voiced distinction, no aspiration distinction: Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese*, Indonesian, French, Turkish, Italian, Persian

- Three-way aspirated/plain/voiced distinction: Wu, Vietnamese, Thai


* primarily a voice distinction, with light aspiration in the voiceless












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