[lojban-beginners] Just got my speakers back online...

[Hal Fulton <hal9000@hypermetrics.com>]

So naturally one of the first things I did was go hear
the podcast.  :)

I have no real complaints with the pronunciation. I think
Matt's accent is fairly neutral -- believe me, I have
heard all kinds of accents in the USA that are far heavier.

I *thought* that he pronounced {gismu} a little off --
perhaps with an English short i, but I wasn't sure.

I had a minor nit with {detri}, mostly because of a high
school speech teacher I had who was perhaps a little
overzealous.

It took me a while to get what she was arguing, but in
the end I was convinced. Most people I've mentioned it
to are not convinced, so I won't be offended if you
tell me I'm crazy.

Say something like "tuck" to yourself. Notice how you
manipulate your tongue on the t -- its initial position
and its motion. In my case, it starts out hovering on
that fleshy ridge behind the teeth, then it flicks away.

Now say "truck" (as many/most Americans do). When I am
not being careful, it's completely different. My tongue
is curled backward, so that the tip is much farther back
(perhaps almost an inch?). The tongue is pressed harder
against the roof of the mouth, so that it makes much
more contact in terms of surface area. Then the motion
is a little slower because of the starting point and
the curled state of the tongue.

In short, the word "trot" we might render in Lojban
as {trat} -- say it's a cmene or something. :)

But what I/we really say is more like {tcrat}.

When you say "trick" -- is the initial sound more like
the beginning of "tick" or the beginning of "chick"?
For many people, it's the latter.

When I pronounce Lojban (which is only between me and the
cat so far), I try to be more precise than I usually would
in English. So I would pronounce {detri} less like {detcri}
and more like I imagine my old Kuwaiti roommate would have
done.

My speech teacher was especially annoyed when a terminal t
was followed by an initial y ("Don't you want to come?")
and we would carelessly pronounce it something like "Doan
chew want to come?" ("Stop 'chew'-ing," she would say.)

Well, enough on that. Getting back to the podcast -- yes,
I liked it a lot. Well done, and keep them coming.


Hal