Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Lojban Text to Speech

From: Candide Kemmler <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 17:26:25 +0100

Le dimanche 6 janvier 2002, à 11:33 AM, Edward Cherlin a écrit :

> On Friday 04 January 2002 07:57 am, Candide Kemmler wrote:
>
>> Yes, I personnally cannot pronunciate "r"'s like the Italians do
>> (trilled ?). And I don't know about the Irish "r". Perhaps the best
>> consensus is the American "r"...
>>
>> Candide
>
> Actually, therre arre severral distinctive Amurrcan 'r's, and some
> that disappeah entially.

Arnt Richard Johansen has very brilliantly discussed the different types 
or r's:

<citation>
The official Lojban R is the alveolar approximant, SAMPA [\r], which is
used in among others US English, UK English, and Swedish.

It is also possible to pronounce R as an alveolar trill, SAMPA [r], as in
Spanish.

The preferred pronunciation, however, seems to be the apico-alveolar tap,
"fish-hook r", as in Spanish, some dialects of Japanese, and some 
dialects
of Norwegian.
</citation>

As far as I'm concerned and given my specific mission, I've spoken today 
with a pronunciation specialist (in french: "logopède", what's the 
english word ? Searched in several online dictionaries... no one seems 
to know the word...).

He says that he's met several people with that same handicap (and as a 
matter of fact, my girlfriend is just like me in this respect !). 
Trilling the R, says he, requires specific tongue skills that some 
people seem very incapable to learn.

Now, I must say that from the above distinctive R's I don't precisely 
know what the "alveolar trill" is, and maybe I could give it a try. But 
I do know that I cannot pronunciate the "apico-alveolar tap, fish-hook 
r".

Therefore, since I'm guessing (but only guessing) that nobody 
experiences problems with this kind of "r", and since it is also the 
"official" R ("official" because, says Arnt, it's so pronounced by the 
speakers of the LLG conversation tapes), I propose that we stick with 
the alveolar R.

The french "R" (don't know the scientific word for that one...) could be 
used too, but I don't think it's very popular. And as randl. nortmn. 
stressed they are hardly distinguishable from the lojban 'x' (but then, 
the "xr" diphtong seems equally problematic with the both the alveolar 
and the "french" R...)

It's very sad for me, as I love trilled r's and I also think that they 
fit perfectly with lojban.

However, since I'm definitely not the only one experiencing this 
problem, it's maybe even a chance that I'm the one supposed to record 
the diphones ! But are actually two people interested in doing the 
recordings, and my colleague's mother tongue is Greek: he has no 
problems with trilled R's.

So what do we do ?

- Do we let Ioannis (my Greek colleague) record the sounds with trilled 
"apico-alveolar, fish-hook r's", knowing that some people might 
experience problems pronunciating them ?

- Do we use the alveolar R ?

- Do we record both versions ?

(...)

Candide