Re: "y"

[Chris Handley <cbmvax!uunet!GANDALF.OTAGO.AC.NZ!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!CHandley>]

Bruce writes
>
>Well, Chris, what languages do you know, so I can give an example?
>It's close to the Scots vowel in "guid," and it is also the German
>in "ueber," the French in "vu," the Dutch in "U" (as in "Dank U
>wel!"), perhaps also used in Afrikaans, but I've never heard that
>language spoken. It is not found in English at all, but if you put
>yout tongue as if you were going to say "ee" as in "feet", but
>purse your lips as if to say "oo," you'll make it.
>
>                                                Bruce

Thanks, but I am afraid that none of that helps! I know (South
African) English and Afrikaans and can recognise all the sounds that
Bruce refers to above. However, to my untrained ear, they are the
samm os the long 'oo' sound as I said earlier. Not the short 'oo'
sound as in 'book' or 'foot', but the longer sound of 'boon',
'soon', 'rune', 'cool', 'plume' etc. I am quite prepared to believe
that a good linguist could distinguish between them, or even that
some versions of English distinguish between them, but what I am
saying is that in my ideolect, all those sound the same.

Given that, I suspect that my version of the Loglan/Lojban 'u' is
wrong, because all the examples I have seen of its sound map on to
my perceptions of the above examples

Chris Handley                                     chandley@otago.ac.nz
Dept of Computer Science                       Ph     (+64) 3-479-8499
University of Otago                           Fax     (+64) 3-479-8577
Dunedin, NZ