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Re: [lojban-beginners] [a] vs [æ]

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 5:04 PM, mudri <jammyatjammy@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm wondering whether I'm pronouncing Lojban's 'a' too high, and I can't find a comparison of [æ] and [a] anywhere. It was mentioned somewhere else that Lojbanising the vowel of "hat" is difficult/obfuscating. However, I find it easy to interpret a Lojban 'a' as a plain English 'a' (as in, recognising {la .kamryn.} is easy, but {la .nikylys.} isn't).

Note that my English vowels are from Yorkshire, meaning that the 'a' sound is probably typical of northern England.

I assume æ is the sound of the "a" in hat, yes? I'm not sure what you mean by a Plain English 'a'", since an English 'a' has at least three different pronunciations even without accounting for accents, but these are some examples of words that- for me at least- have the same sounding as:

'a': hot, father, call, dark, far, pall, Iran (la.iran., not "I ran")....
"æ": pat, math, pal, cap, ran....
"A": mate, pail, ray, date....

In Lojban, the first and last are zo.a and lu .ai li'u, respectively. The best way to render æ in Lojban I can think of is lu .ae li'u, but that's not a legal diphthong.

Finally, .ybu isn't usually an "a" in English. It's pronounced exactly the same as "uh", and its sound is usually found as "u" in English words: putt, shut, rudder....

It is of course possible that these example words aren't pronounced the same by both of us, since I speak U.S.E. and you speak B.C.E., but it's my hope they are.

--
mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

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