[Lexicog] new nosey word

[Preslav Ivanov Nakov]

The same philosophy is shared by the writing system of some other Slavonic
languages in ex-Yugoslavia, e.g. Serbo-Croation (now Serbian, Croatian and
Bosnian) and Macedonian (I am not sure about Slovenian but I guess the same
applies to it too).

This theory is needed, as the written language is missing an additional
vowel that is in fact present in the spoken language. It is pronounced
approximately (not exactly) as the vowel in the word "cut". This letter is
present in practically all Slavonic languages but for some reason, the
grammars try to ignore it, except in Bulgarian, where there is a special
letter for it.

So, in the languages of ex-Yugoslavia and ex-Czechoslovakia, the grammar
considers that if a word is missing enough vowels, "r" and "l" can introduce
it. Looking phonetically, this is like sometimes read "r" as just "r" and
sometimes as "r"+"*" (where "*" stands for the vowel in "but"). The same
applies to "l".

In Russian, they have a letter for the combination "y"+"*". Here "y" is read
as a consonant in English. They have similar letters for the combinations
"ya" and "yu" (so does Bulgarian).

So, I consider that "r" and "l" are not really vowels and cannot be vowels.
They are just a combination of a consonant and an optional vowel.

In fact, missing the explicit sound "*" causes further problems, as
sometimes one wants to pronounce a word with "y" preceding "r" and sometimes
- following it. What they do in ex-Yugoslavia is, they use an apostrophe in
one of these cases, e.g. "vrv" vs. "v'rv", to be read as vr*v and v*rv
respectively.

In other cases when something is pronounced as "*", normally the grammar
says to write "a" and people tend to pronounce it as "a". Bulgarian is not
afraid of "*" but still the Eastern dialects systematically pronounce a
large part of the written "a" or "ya" (when not stressed, but even when
stressed at the end of verbs) as something close to "*". In this respect, I
like the written system of Romanian, who have a letter for "a", for "*", but
also for a sound between them (in fact, it is the latter that is used in
"but"). In Bulgarian adopts the Romanian written system, the Eastern
dialects should use this middle sound for the non-stressed "a" and "ya".

Finally, I think in Czech "r" as a vowel is read as "r"+"*" while in Serbian
it is "*"+"r".


Preslav

-----Original Message-----
From: Jan Ullrich [mailto:jfu at centrum.cz]

Fritz

In Czech, my native language, probably the longest word without vowels is
"scvrnkls". It means something like "you pushed it away with you finger".
I think most of the Czech vowel-less words usually have about three to five
consonants, but quite frequently they can be combined into sentences,
similar to the famous Czech tongue twister:

Strc prst skrz krk. (Stick your finger through your throat.)

In such Czech words it is indeed "r" and "l" that are phonetically
vowel-like.

Jan



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