[lojban-beginners] Re: lojban-beginners Digest V6 #169

[der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>]

> Here is a hint to figure out this puzzle! The letters "c" "h" make
> the CH sound in English.

Sometimes - but they also make other sounds, such as K ("ache",
"technology"), SH ("machine"), and occasionally others, like one that
English has only in loanwords from languages like German, Arabic, and
Russian, the top-of-the-throat guttural perhaps most commonly
transliterated "kh" - {x}, IIRC.  English spelling<->sound mapping is a
right horror - google for "english is tough stuff" (with the quotes) if
you want some examples.

> But there is no reason for this.

Actually, there probably is, but it would take a linguist or
philologist to explain it. :-)

> The mouth does not start with a "c" sound and transition into an "h"
> sound when it creates a ch sound.  What two sounds, when you put them
> one after another, blend into that sound?

The ones English canonically spells T and SH (or nearly - the tongue
position of CH is usually a little bit back from its position for T,
but I, at least, find it very difficult to pronounce an unmodified T
immediately followed by SH; the following SH seems to want to pull the
tongue back from the teeth a little, producing the usual "soft CH").

/~\ The ASCII				der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML	       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B