[YG Conlang Archives] > [ceqli group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
> > Yes, but then you're leaving the door open for the > > use of any combination of oclusive+sibilant (ts, tx, > > dz, dj, ps, bz, ks, gz, kx, gj...), because if you > > allow for tx, why not allowing also for ts (necessary > > for slavic roots), ps and ks (greek), kx and gj > > (sanskrit), etc...? > > Sure. Anything that is considered pronounceable by consensus is allowed. > And schwa-buffering will be available for those who find the combinations > difficult. That's sure going to be a tough task!! We Spanish speakers, for example, consider all the clusters of the kind sibilant+consonant to be "unpronounceable". Georgian speakers, for their part, would say that they don't find anythin "unpronounceable" at all in such clusters as bg-, tkv-, zgv-, mtv-, mkvl-, mrgv-, mtsvrtn-, gvprtskvn-... which are in common use in their language. And, once one gets used to the prosody of the language, it's not that difficult to say them, really --I checked that myself: of course at first I thought they were impossible, but then I had the opportunity of listening to a Georgian news broadcast for about half an hour; I didn't understand a word, but after that I tried to pronounce those clusters and I found that using that prosody I'd just been carefully listening to I could do it without effort; what's more, I was in fact EAGER to pronounce those long consonant clusters, almost as if that prosody that had just sticked into my head were urging me to put as many consonants together as I could. Something similar can be said of English consonant sequences, which using Spanish prosody many of them (chaNGeD To, diDN'T Do, waS STiCKeD To, STReNGTHS ...) seem unpronounceable. I can't say them if I use the prosody of my native tongue, but I find no difficulty when using English prosody instead. Best regards, Javier