Re: [lojban-beginners] oh my god, please make it stop, it hurts so much! (was: Re: Questions on the sounds chosen for Lojban)

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Sunday 23 January 2011 09:06:34 tijlan wrote:
> I agree with Timo that we want to avoid English-based representations
> of foreign sounds. Is using English respelling keys not confusing even
> among natives?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pronunciation_respelling_key

It is. "or" or "awr" is the diphthong in "north" or "war", in that key, but to 
me they are different.

> Here's a typical IPA-less, English-speaker-oriented beginner's guide
> to languages:
>
> http://wordsandphrases.wordpress.com/french-words-phrases/
>
> The French "salut" is taught as "sah-lew". An uninformed reader might
> learn it as two long vowels with an approximant [sɑ:'lju:], when the
> correct pronunciation has no long vowel and approximant, [sa.ly]
> (notice also that English is stress-timed while French is
> syllable-timed; there is no distinctive stress in French words).
> Fortunately, French has allophonic long vowels but don't phonemically
> distinguish them from the short vowels, so [u:] instead of [u] isn't
> much of a problem. However, it would be a trouble in languages that do
> make such a distinction, such as German, Finnish, Japanese, Arabic,
> and many others.

How would they respell "cire", "sur", "sœur", "sieur", and "sueur" so that the 
Francophone could tell what the Anglophone was saying?

Pierre
-- 
.i toljundi do .ibabo mi'afra tu'a do
.ibabo damba do .ibabo do jinga
.icu'u la ma'atman.

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