velar trill (was: ~Yeshuewu)

[Paul A Johnston, Jr.]

Tom,
The IPA uses a simple [r] for the admittedly common alveolar trill.  No one here was talking about them as being exotic.  There is a symbol for the uvular trill [R], and even for voiceless bilabial (think of a sound a horse makes) and voiced bilabial (brrr-cold) trills, namely [P] and [B] respectively.  I suppose a symbol for a dental trill, made like an alveolar one, but with the tongue against the teeth would be [r] with a little "table" underneath it, as with other dental consonants.

By the way, our usual American r IS an "exotic" sound, far less common worldwide than the trill is.  English has a relatively weird sound system by world standards, and, because of the paucity of monophthongal vowels, American English (and other varieties partially descending from Southeastern and East Midland British English--and that's where all StdE comes from) is especially so.  I think, between your wanting a transparent spelling system and your wish for relatively "unmarked" consonants and vowels, you should try Spanish, or even better (despite front rounded vowels), Finnish.

But the weirdness is part of what makes English dialectology so fun.

Paul Johnston

----- Original Message -----
From: Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
Date: Tuesday, June 9, 2009 1:06 pm
Subject: Re: velar trill (was: ~Yeshuewu)

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------
> ------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: velar trill (was: ~Yeshuewu)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------
>
> If the iPA does not recognize these velar trills or alveolar
> trills (Spanish r) it is sorely lacking.  They are real.  They are
> the most often made sounds outside of the English foenubet (set of
> sounds) ref truespel book one.
>
> I'd say that all sounds are not equal in difficulty.  The harder
> ones have been dropped from USA English, like the trilled r (which
> you can still hear in Edison recordings, eg the word great with a
> multi-trilled r ~grqaet).  The most difficult sounds would seem to
> be those showing droppings, like ~th, ~t, ~h, ~r, ~au (awe), ~l
> (widow wed wabbit).  There would appear to be more mouth-work in
> saying them, so folks might want to work around them.
>
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
> see truespel.com
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
> > Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 10:06:03 -0400
> > From: thnidu at GMAIL.COM
> > Subject: Re: velar trill (was: ~Yeshuewu)
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header ---------
> --------------
> > Sender: American Dialect Society
> > Poster: Mark Mandel
> > Subject: Re: velar trill (was: ~Yeshuewu)
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> --------------
> >
> > Herb:
> >> There is no IPA symbol for the sound. Â Apparently IPA covers only
> >> terrestrial languages.
> >
> > Randy:
> >> Yes, for that you'd have to use the EPA (Extraterrestrial
> Paraphonetic>> Alphabet), now under construction. Â It uses a
> quantum matrix of
> >> decillions of symbolic representations of a wide variety of codable
> >> media. Â A notable example is chemolfactory character set:
> >>
> >> http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread281472/pg1
> >>
> >> " I'm imagining non-auditory languages. For example, one in which
> >> creatures emit chemicals and they smell each other. Imagine
> hundreds of thousands of chemical building blocks in a language.
> Very smelly."
> >
> >
> > I used to say with assurance that no human language would use this
> > phone (which I write phonetically as k with a tilde), at least
> > lexically, because the physical effort was too great. But as it came
> > with practice, I realized that that could be simply the same
> > lectocentrism that brands velar and uvular trills, clicks, front
> > rounded vowels, and any other phone that's not in own language as
> > "hard".
> >
> > There are attested (in sf) olfactory languages. The citation I'm
> > thinking of, though I can't recall the title or author, is at
> least 45
> > years old and features two humans and an alien who is "cabin
> boy" of
> > his ship. Since his actual name is literally unprintable, the author
> > nicknames him "Tommy Loy", and ends the story with a very shaggy
> > allusion.
> >
> > Klingon, however, was developedXXXXXXXX documented by a human
> > linguist, Dr. Marc Okrand, and is representable in IPA.
> >
> > m a m
> >
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