Comments | wwidsith: (без темы)

wwidsith

(Untitled)

Mar 03, 2008 10:05

I Facebooked Vicky Coren about her article last week, and she wrote me the nicest, sweetest, friendliest message back. The inter-highway is just great sometimes!

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I think I've decided to turn down the French job. I can't afford to relocate on the salary they're offering me and expect to see anything of Hannah. There are other ( Read more... )

can't i use my wit as a pitchfork, lao, poetry, languages

Comments 8

surrealkitten March 3 2008, 16:36:46 UTC

shanghai job!!! hannah can come, too!

wwidsith March 3 2008, 18:44:12 UTC

oh how I wish........

hobnobofjoy March 3 2008, 21:58:35 UTC

I'm glad you've made a decision, although I'm kind of sad you decided not to go. It would have been so cool... But hey, there's plenty of time yet!

I'm looking at OE phonology at the moment and have Sweet, Campbell, and Mitchell and Robinson out. What was the /a/ phoneme you weren't sure about?

wwidsith March 4 2008, 10:32:59 UTC

The way I learnt it, the letter A is pronounced [ɑ]. But a lot of people seem to pronounce it [a]. What do they all say?

hobnobofjoy March 4 2008, 10:38:10 UTC

It depends on phonemic context - I will paraphrase Sweet because he gives the shortest explanation:

short a (as in OE mana) is pronounced as in German 'mann'
long a (as in OE stan) is pronounced as in ModE 'father'.

That covers both sounds. I think.

(Embarrassingly I had to refresh my IPA knowledge too there - you do keep me on my toes)

wwidsith March 4 2008, 10:41:50 UTC

I'm surprised by that. Obviously stan is long, but I would pronounce a short-A as a shorter version of the same sound. How up-to-date is Sweet?

Also, Wikipedia (I know they're not exactly 100% reliable) seems to agree with me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_phonology

Thread 5

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wwidsith March 4 2008, 10:38:59 UTC

Yeah normally I just buy some books on it. Lao is a bit different because there's so little been published on it, but for other languages it's pretty simple. The Michel Thomas CDs are particularly amazing if you're learning a major world language. There is stuff on the web quite often, although the quality is pretty variable.

It is quite hard sometimes, especially if you've never studied a foreign language before, but it's just an interesting project and you get instant benefits if you have any exposure to it. I don't learn languages to any very high standard, my goals are basically to be able to buy bus tickets, coffees etc when I'm abroad, and also to be able to read some of the literature, given enough time and a fat dictionary.

I wouldn't try M&S though.. it's really just for buying pants if you're middle-aged....