[lojban-beginners] Re: Pronunciation: a major problem in spreading lojban

[Leonardo Castro <leolucas1980@gmail.com>]

> 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

Is the Croatian [r] voiced or unvoiced.
I can't realize the difference between a "voiced r" and a "r"
spoken at the same time as a schwa.


2009/6/2 Ivo Doko <ivo.doko@gmail.com>:
> 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 /pÉrËvaËk/ 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.
>
>
>
>