Re: The Next Step (was Vulcan in Vulcan)
Saul Epstein 
Wed, 22 Oct 1997 16:03:23 -0500

At 04:43 PM 10/22/97 MET_DST, Maggie wrote:

>Just a short comment on the "lettering"/pronounciation scheme suggested by
>Saul...
>
>I have, in principle, nothing against using doubled vowels to designate the 
>"drawn-out" or "longer" sounds. The only problem I see with them is that 
>one might be tempted to pronounce, e,g, "oo" as [oh-oh]. An example (of 
>this opposite use of the notation] might be  the way some Japanese(?) words 
>that contain a part that really should be pronounced [ih-ih] sometimes is 
>transcribed into English/western languages simply as "ii". Oh, well, it 
>will just be a new thing to get used to.

Yeah, I can see that. It will also make some diphthongs (like /ooii/)
interesting. But two /i/s will almost certainly be manifest as /i'i/, so
that's not so much of a problem.

Also, I feel compelled to point out that the difference between V and VV is
NOT necessarily one of length but of place. From this perspective, writing
out two signs is no better than using the length diacritic. But our options
without resorting to ANSI are limited.

>I do have problems with some of the suggested examples of pronounciation, 
>especially those using French. (This probably comes from Swedes having a 
>different accent when speaking French than, e,g., native Anglish-speakers.)

My knowledge of French is extremely limited, so I'm trusting the Zvelebils
here. Since I recognize the categories of vowel being delineated, I could
offer examples from English instead -- except that I don't think English has
the sounds in question. That is, the <ey> in "hey" is not the same as the
/ee/. It's more like a diphthong /eeii/. Or the sequence /eey/.
 
>One case in point: the "ee" sound has the French word "prenez" as an 
>example. Now, I would pronounce "prenez" as [pr(ehr)n(e!)] where (ehr) 
>stands for the sound a hesitant speaker makes, and (e!) is a rather short 
>e-sound. Other people might pronounce the word as [pr(ehr)n(ey)], with the 
>(ey) much like in the word "hey" (as in hey there!). I can't quite figure 
>out which (if, indeed any ;-) of my interpretations is the correct one...

While I can't really tell from your descriptions, I think I know enough from
having heard other people pronounce French to know that your own
pronounciation corresponds to what the ZC intends. English-speakers will
tend to say /pr^nei/ for "prenez" because we don't have two separate /e/s.
We have one that corresponds to the Vulcan /e/ in words like "bet," but the
Vulcan /e:/ or /ee/ only occurs as the first half of the diphthong in words
like "bait." (I can't speak for all dialects, of course.)

>Finally, just like Rob, I was confused by that infamous "That...-sentence" 
>that Saul wrote. While I got the point about the overuse of pronouns, I 
>have no clue what the word "deictic" means... 

There I go again. "Deictic" is an adjectival form of "deixis," a grammatical
term referring to the ways a language divides up time and space relative to
the speaker.

--
from Saul Epstein
liberty <at> uit <dot> net
www <dot> johnco <dot> cc <dot> ks <dot> us <slash> <tilde> sepstein
"Surak ow'pha:per the's'hi the's'cha'; the's'pha:dzhar the's'hi surakecha'."
					-- K'dvarin Ursw~l'at