[lojban-beginners] Re: Anyone there?

[Tristan Mc Leay <kesuari@yahoo.com.au>]

 --- Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>
wrote: 
> On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 06:13:02PM +1000, Tristan Mc
> Leay wrote:
> >  --- Robin Lee Powell
> <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote: 
> > > On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 04:19:42PM +1000,
> Tristan Mc Leay wrote:
> > > >  --- Robin Lee Powell
> <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote: 
> > > > 
> > > > > It's actually the lack of short 'i' that
> pisses me off.  :-)
> > > > 
> > > > Why is it that [I] isn't an allophone of /i/? 
> > 
> > You didn't answer this qn. Is it just random?
> Perhaps you don't know?
> > It's something that bugs me.
> 
> Well, I sort of did.  In my dialect, those sounds
> are so amazingly far
> apart that I find the idea of them being allophones
> rather bizarre.
> 
> More importantly, it's used as a buffer vowel.  You
> can insert short 'i'
> anywhere there's a consonant cluster than you can't
> pronounce (hence me
> Lojbanizing my name with rabn).

But that still brings up two issues: 
 (1) my original point, that [i] vs [I] is not 
     particularly well-attested amongst the world's 
     languages. Spanish for instance doesn't have it. 
     To the best of my understanding, langs that 
     don't have both tend to have difficulty 
     distinguishing them.
 (2) any non-lojban vowel (apart from [e] and [O], 
     being acceptible alternatives for /E/ and /o/, 
     yes?) can be used as a buffer, I thought. So if I
     wanted, I could happily say rabn. as [rabn=]
     or [rab2n] or [rabVn] or any other number of 
     options.

> > No, not at all. But the 'ee' in 'beet' is a
> diphthong IMD (starting
> > from something like [@] and ending at somewhere
> like [i]). The 'i' in
> > 'bit' is a short vowel. 
> 
> Wow.  That doesn't resemble my dialect even a
> little.

The best way to approach the phonetics of english
dialects is with a clean slate. My dialect also has a
just-about pure length distinction between say dad and
mad, bud and barred, shed and shared, and less
definitely bid and beard ([I:] and [I@] and various
other similar sounds turn up as allophones of each
other conditioned as much by randomness as other
sounds).

> Can you give me an example of a word with [I] in it?

Well, I suppose assuming short i is [I], then
'little'. Or do you mean a recording? I'm not sure
what you mean here.

> I have difficulty imagining two sounds more easy to
> distinguish than [i]
> and [I], so this is a really wierd discussion for
> me.

[2] and [a] are pretty distinct...

--
Tristan.

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