Topic awaiting preservation: The risks of using a foreign language...

http://www.engrish.com/
/Dan

{cell 260}
-{ a vibration is a movement that doesn't know which way to go }-

oh my god, that's great! LE PUKE! haha, cool site! bookmarked
thx for sharing

Oh yes...good old engrish

"Free drinks for ladies with nuts"

For those of you interested in why many native speakers of Asian languages (chinese, korean, japanese, et al) pronounce English with an 'r' for the 'l'...

First a bit of work for native English speakers. When you say the word "spit", put your hand in front of your mouth, close. Feel the amount of air that comes out on the 'p' sound? Now, say the word "pit." Notice that a lot more air comes out when you say the second 'p' sound. In English, when a word begins with a 'p' sound (International Phonetic Association would call that a [p] sound, created without using the voice box [voiceless] and using both lips [bilabial]) the speaker naturally aspirates the sound (in IPA, this is written as [ph] with the [h] superscript, but I can't do that here, so I'll annotate it as [p^h]). This goes across the board. Try it. Say pit, then spit. Try pray and spray. You'll notice.

What does this mean? It means that [p^h] is an allomorph of the phoneme [p] and it used only when [p] begins a word. Which means, when [p] begins the word, it is realized as [p^h]. All other times it is realized as [p]. But we as English speakers consider them the same sound; if someone tried to say "pit" without the aspiration, we'd say, "hey, you sound funny, but I know precisely what word that is." (For comparison's sake, in Hindi, the [p] and [p^h] are completely different phonemes, just as different as our 'b' and 'k' sounds are. To use a [p] where a [p^h] is needed changes the entire word)

The same thing is true with many Asian languages, but with the allomorph [r] of the phoneme [l]. Take a few words from Korean for example (I shall type them first in IPA, then in as best I can if you don't know IPA):

[rupi] "roo-pee" (rhymes with ruby)
[mul] "mool" (rhymes with pool)
[pal] "pahl" (sounds like "pall" bearer)
[saram] "sah-rahm" (like the first sound of Saruman (Sa-) then sounds like ROM)
[ilkop] "eel-kope" (eel-cope.. uhh..sounds like that)

Given this small selection of words, I will draw two conclusions for you. First, lets assume the allophone in this situation is [l], which is realized as [l] or [r] given criteria (Linguistic notation to follow, then plain English): /l/ -> [r] /_ V

aa soo desu ne.


It's only after we've lost everything...
That we're free to do anything...

twItch^ that was very informative thanks.

I've kind of gotten used to this as I have some friends that are Czech that I hang around with quite a bit. Just like in this case, their V's and W's get a little mixed up. They don't hear the difference between them so they often get them confused. Such as: BMW becomes a BMV or the WTC becomes the VTC or Apes become Epes.

They have taught me some Czech stuff and I have a hard time with some of the sounds. I can't hear the difference but they can. So...I can understand what they mean when they say "I can't hear the difference".

But, I think the hardest part is when they get the sentence structure mixed up and I have to translate and put the words in the correct order to try to figure out what they mean



Later,

C:\


~Binary is best~

All your ba *gunshot*

Dang twItch^!
You do have a knack of taking all the fun out of this dont' you LOL
Superb info though
/Dan


{cell 260}
-{ a vibration is a movement that doesn't know which way to go }-

I'm generally referred to as a "crazy linguist."

Sometimes cunning, but only by risque crowds.

Hey C: where abouts are they from (cz friends that is) I am in Brno and yes its a bloody hard language to learn i've been here to years and still struggling..

want to make them struggle, get them to say three hundred and thirty three thousand three hundred and thirty three the way they pronounce their r's is different ro us especially when it accented like this Ř hehehe



[This message has been edited by tomeaglescz (edited 10-11-2003).]