summercomfort | (no subject)

Today has been a good day
- I started studying for the CSET: Social Science on the bus today
- I finally finished the Pronunciation Guide of MIGHTINESS. Sounds were frustrating because the background noise was quite loud. Noise removal did bad things to f's and p's. (What are they called? ejaculates? fricatives? something porny) But yes, check it out. It's got pictures and everything. :D I freaked out for a second b/c I thought I needed to add another exception to the converter (and it's already riddled with exceptions and "IE is stoopid" comments), but I checked the dictionary and I think it's all right.*
- Today was popcorn day.
- I gave Kelly the short thing I did involving two of her dolls honeymooning on the beach, and she seemed to enjoy it. :D
- A bit of news came in the mail today (um... email ^^;;) that has left me somewhat giddy and quite nervous-overwhelmed.
- I clicked back on my Friends page and found a feed-dump of several day's worth of Neil entries
- Got in on the Google Talk.... except that no one else was online w/, so didn't get to try it.

Which means that people need to get the latest novelty Google item: Google Talk

-------------
* The problem being that while both nu and nü exist in Chinese, only nüe exist, so I was wondering if nue would default to nüe, just like jue does. J, along with q and x, being one of those alveolar things, are so far in the front that is impossible to attach u to, so ü defaults to u because there is no u. In fact, trying to say ju ('joo') would come out like 'zhoo'. The only vowels they carry are i (pronounced 'ee') and ü. I apologize to all the Ling majors out there who are wincing at my casual mutilation of Ling-speak.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The sound [f] (like s and sh in both Chinese and English) is a fricative. [p] is actually a stop, or plosive, in which air momentarily ceases flowing through your mouth altogether. As far as I know there's nothing called an ejaculate, though there's an "ejective" consonant, rarely used in English but not entirely unknown. I would have no problem renaming this one to your suggestion, because linguistics can never have too many porny words. ("Mmm, baby! I love it when you do that bilabial fricative! Articulate a plosive ejaculate on my alveolar ridge! Ooooh.")

I would like to add that the orthographic sequence "joo" should be seen in many more linguistics articles, though preferably spelled with zeroes.

Well, p and f are both labials, even if one is bilabial and the other is labiodental. And they're both voiceless, which is probably part of the problem.

I guess the phenomenon I'm trying to describe is where the voicing is um... delayed? Like things like ga and ba and stuff, their wave form is one solid block, whereas things like fa and pa and ta have a little blip that's me saying p-, f-, t-, and then a solid block that's the a sound. That little blip is easily lost in the noise reduction process.

Also, regarding the j00, I'm not saying it's impossible to pronounce in English. Just impossible in Chinese, because the j sound is so far in the front that it can only have two vowels directly following: i (lips pulled to the side) and ü (lips rounded). I think Chinese vowels are like this:
back: a (open), o (rounded)
middle: e (open), u (rounded)
front: i (open), ü(rounded)

The back vowels correspond with the retroflexed set: zh, ch, sh, r
The front vowels correspond with the palatalized set: j, q, x

Aha! What you're trying to describe is "aspiration." Typically aspiration is used to describe the aftermath of a stop that is followed by a puff of air before the onset of voicing. [f], of course, also has the puff of air, though this wouldn't normally be described as aspiration since [f] is not a stop; I'm not entirely sure there's a word for "sounds that make a puff of air that interferes with voice recordings come out of the mouth."

Aspiration, of course, is very much a sexual word, suggestive as it is of "ass pirate" (n. one who plunders booty).

Sweet. I like how you kept it simple and didn't go into the 'unaspirated' / 'aspirated' business like they usually do with Americans. It's confusing and not all that necessary for English-speakers. Our voiced consonants are so barely voiced that for all practical purposes they're unaspirated and voiceless in the initial position.

Thanks! I'm writing for docent trainees so I was going for functionally accurate, organized, simple. (Hence the converter, for the people who don't want to bother with remembering exceptions)

How does Google Talk work on your Mac? :O

Sorry, that was me. Forgot to sign in.

Adium. There's a link on Google that tells you how to do it.