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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 31 of 33 (536250)
11-20-2009 6:38 PM
Reply to: Message 29 by Parasomnium
11-20-2009 6:56 AM


More About Arabic
But you said that the k in "kid" and "cod" sound different because of the following vowel, and I had concluded that myself also. But "kalb" and "qalb" have the same vowel. If you want to pronounce each of them with their "k" to sound like their respective phonemes in "kid" and "cod", you have to force yourself.
Well, in English the quality of the vowel modifies the consonant. In Arabic it's the other way round --- "qalb" does come out sounding a bit like "qolb". But there won't always be an audible difference between vowels and consonants related to whether they're preceded by k or q.
Further, consider what happens when a root is conjugated or declined. If I remember rightly, the plural of "kalb" is "aklab" and the plural of "qalb" is "quluub". So one can't think that it's the quality of the following sound that determines whether the consonant is a "k" or a "q" --- it's always the quality of the consonant which remains constant when such grammatical changes take place.
---
The usual rule for transliterating Arabic is to do it letter for letter from their alphabet. So for example we would write "al shams" ("the sun") when it is pronounced "ash shams" --- because the Arabs always write the consonant in "al" as an "l" however it's pronounced. This is arguably a bad way to transliterate Arabic, but it's the method almost universally followed.
Now in the case of "k" and "q", they have two different letters, which we therefore transliterate differently, whereas, if they mark vowels at all (which is not usually done in Arabic, but which is an optional extra) they would use the same vowel marking for the vowel in "kalb" as for the vowel in "qalb".
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
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bluescat48
Member (Idle past 4189 days)
Posts: 2347
From: United States
Joined: 10-06-2007


Message 32 of 33 (536256)
11-20-2009 8:05 PM
Reply to: Message 30 by dronestar
11-20-2009 11:29 AM


Re: Greek to me?
This might explain why Chinese people have a near impossible time to pronounce "L"s?
I find the same problem when Koreans try to learn English. The are no "f" or "v" sounds in Korean. France becomes Pranche, Very becomes Belli or Berri. I find many Ameicans trying to speak German have trouble with the Glottal stop in such words as "Bach" or trying to speak French with the nasels such words as "un." It seems that whenever a sound doesn't exist in a particular language, people have trouble with foreign words with such a sound.

There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002
Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969
Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

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 Message 30 by dronestar, posted 11-20-2009 11:29 AM dronestar has not replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 33 of 33 (536262)
11-20-2009 11:46 PM
Reply to: Message 30 by dronestar
11-20-2009 11:29 AM


Re: Greek to me?
Hi, Dronester.
dronester writes:
This might explain why Chinese people have a near impossible time to pronounce "L"s?
This isn't as bad as people think. There is actually an "L" in Mandarin, and it's pretty much the same as our "L." But, they don't use the letter "L" as a liquid consonent, like we do in English (that means, at the end of a syllable).
The closest thing they have in Mandarin is an ending "r" sound which is pronounced a pretty much like the "r" at the end of your screen name.
-----
dronester writes:
Is it NEE-ha or NEE-how?
It's really neither. In English, the letter's "ow" make a sound like a short "a" followed by a long "o." In Chinese (and lots of other languages), the equivalent is spelled "ao" and pronounced like "ah" followed by "o."
If you want to approximate it, say "NEE how."

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
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