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On Mar 28, 2006, at 8:31 AM, Jim Henry wrote:
But just because your language contains a schwa phone doesn't make it easy for you to pronounce on command in contexts where you're not used to it, if it's not phonemic in your native language. Like many English speakers have nonphonemic initial /C/ in words like "huge", but still have trouble with final /C/ in German "ich" etc. And if you're not used to hearing it phonemically, you might have trouble distinguishing it aurally from /e/ or /a/ -- when other people pronounce /k@.tS@.'pe/ you might hear /ka.tSa.'pe/ and think it's three Tceqli morphemes instead of one.
Good points. Another, whackier idea that's been discussed is to make the 'e' the buffering phoneme, and require it, not make it optional. The downside is that it can't be used as anything -but- the buffering phoneme. Thus, in effect, reducing the vowel inventory to four. So you'd have ketcepa. Or, ke-che-PAH, because the e's don't count as vowels for stress purposes. Another problem with it is that we'd have to decide which clusters need the buffer and which don't ketcepa or ketecepa? I don't really like this, but thinking about it might lead to a better idea down the road. Rex May rmay@hidden.email See some of my cartoons at: http://homepage.mac.com/rmay/ NOW UPDATED REGULARLY!