zompist bboard

Zompist's grammars usually describe /r/'s in most Almean languages (Cadhinor, Cuezi, Axuna :sh in) as an approximant just like in English. Yet in his audio examples I hear mostly trilled or tapped /r/. Is that on purpose?

Also, what is the meaning of Lesdurdagram (name of the Gurdago's great tower)?

From what I recall of the Cadhinor grammar, it had a tap/trill r, as does modern Verdurian. Cuêzi's approximant isn't quite the same as an English (not retroflexed, which is arguably one of the main features of the Midwestern [r\] Zomp compares it to.

As for the sound files, I dunno, personally I prefer taps since the variance of English /r/ is so massively divergent. Perhaps a similar reason drives it.

Lesḍurḍagram can be loosely translated 'the great greeter'. -ram means 'great'; lesḍurḍag is a verb form which literally means "You (pl.) will be greeted."

I really should read up on Almea a lot more - after all, it is one of the things that keep this Board together.

This thread brings up a question - maybe it has been asked before.

We are told that humans on Almea are not really humans. In fact, they evolved out of aquatic beings much more recently than the ancestors of humans on Earth. I presume that if they look more or less like us, it's because of convergent evolution - they evolved into an ecological niche similar to the ones ours lived in hundreds of thousands of years ago.

OK, so they are similar to us. But the ability to vibrate the tongue as we expel air from the lung must depend very specifically on the exact shape of the tongue in the mouth - if it was even slightly different, we probably couldn't do it. Can a chimp vibrate its tongue? Can a gorilla?

So, how likely is it that a humanoid that evolved on a different planet, despite many functional similarities to us, would be able to roll its r's?

Almea is fantasy, not science fiction... think of it as an alternative Earth, not as a planet somewhere in our galaxy. The convention in fantasy is to have humans as the protagonists.

But to answer the scientific question... parrots seem to do pretty well with human speech despite having very different anatomy and evolution. I have no idea why that is, but it seems to indicate that vocal tracts don't need to be extremely close to ours to be able to speak like us.

Hmm.
Does anybody know exactly what parrots *do* while articulating? Thy don't have lips, but I've heard them pronounce bilabials or pretty darn close.

And how flexible are parrots at speaking, anyway? Could they learn to pronounce Ubykh or !Xóõ words, for example?

dhokarena56 wrote:Hmm.
Does anybody know exactly what parrots *do* while articulating? Thy don't have lips, but I've heard them pronounce bilabials or pretty darn close.

Aparrotly they do it all with the larynx (or the avian equivalent). Nothing really goes on supralaryngeally.

I can't seem to pronounce /r/. I use /r\/ for English, and when I try to speak Spanish, I end up pronouncing <rr> with a French accent: Spanish /r/ becomes French /R\/.

Tip from a spanisher: say /e:/ then lick your alveolar ridge, repeat.

(that's just behind your teeth, BTW)

Torco wrote:Tip from a spanisher: say /e:/ then lick your alveolar ridge, repeat.

(that's just behind your teeth, BTW)

Tried it, got a raised alveolar approximant/voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative. Lucky for me, I've been doing alveolar trills since I was a wee lad...