UNID (off topic)

Talk about anything not related to Transcendence.
Vachtra
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Wikipedia has sound samples. I checked them. Those are what 'y' and 'w' represent in English orthography.
You checked only what you are trying to defend. What you didn't check was what I have been saying. If you looked further into wikipedia then you would have found the following page on consonants which only further refutes your statements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonant.
It states that the consonant "y" is represented by the [j] in the alphabet you have been trying to use and is a consonant.
In fact what you have been looking at is not the english alphabet but can be used to sound out just about any language. Or in other words this is not the alphabet you would use to spell with.

Spelling bee example.
Speaker: Spell international.
Speller: International, ɪ ɾ̃ ɚ n æ ʃ ɨ n ə ɫ, international.
Speaker: Are you ok? Do we need a doctor? Quick I think he's hemorrhaging!

For those of you just joining us the part in the middle is the alphabet Atarlost has been referring to.

edit: Sorry for the extreme sarcasm but it seemed necessary.
edit2: the above spelling is only one of a nearly infinite number of ways to spell international depending on dialect and location of the person speaking, all of which would be correct. Even two people who live in the same house and grew up together might say it slightly different thus changing the spelling.
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Atarlost
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And if you checked further you'd find this:
Semivowels, by definition, contrast with vowels by being non-syllabic. In addition, they are usually shorter than vowels.[2] In languages as diverse as Amharic, Yoruba, and Zuni, semivowels are produced with a narrower constriction in the vocal tract than their corresponding vowels.[5] Nevertheless, semivowels may be phonemically equivalent with vowels. For example, the English word fly can be considered either as an open syllable ending in a diphthong [flaɪ̯], or as a closed syllable ending in a consonant [flaj].[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semivowel# ... ith_vowels

The definitional difference between a semivowel and a vowel is that the former are nonsyllabic, but this is only a required distinction if you deny the existence of open syllables.

Compare to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabic_consonant
A syllabic consonant is a consonant which either forms a syllable on its own, or is the nucleus of a syllable.
...
Many dialects of English may use syllabic consonants in words such as even [ˈiːvn̩], awful [ˈɔːfɫ̩] and rhythm [ˈɹɪðm̩], which English dictionaries' respelling systems usually treat as realizations of underlying sequences of schwa plus consonant (e.g. /ˈiːvən/).[2]
...
A number of languages have syllabic fricatives, also known as fricative vowels.[citation needed] In several varieties of Chinese, certain high vowels following fricatives or affricatives are pronounced as extensions of the sounds, with voicing added (if not already present) and a vowel pronounced while the tongue and teeth remain in the same position as for the preceding consonant, leading to the turbulence of a fricative carrying over into the vowel. In Mandarin Chinese, this happens for example with sī shī rī. Traditional grammars describing them as having a "buzzing" sound. A number of modern linguists[5][6] describe them as true syllabic fricatives, although with weak frication. This is accordingly transcribed [sź̩ ʂʐ̩́ ʐʐ̩́] respectively.[7]
So the distinction between semivowels and vowels is that vowels are the nucleus of a syllable, but sonorants as closed as fricatives can be used as syllable nuclei.

See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphthong
A diphthong (/ˈdɪfθɒŋ/ or /ˈdɪpθɒŋ/;[1] Greek: δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally "two sounds" or "two tones"), also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel. For most dialects of English, the phrase "no highway cowboys" contains five distinct diphthongs.

Diphthongs contrast with monophthongs, where the tongue doesn't move and only one vowel sound is heard in a syllable. Where two adjacent vowel sounds occur in different syllables—for example, in the English word re-elect—the result is described as hiatus, not as a diphthong.
This is exactly what happens with the more open so called consonants.

How can we not conclude that the distinction between vowels and consonants is at least 80% bullshit?
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Vachtra
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Wow, lots of text and you're still avoiding the topic.

English spelling and usage, not international phonetics.

edit: And we're way off the topic of how people say UNID. :shock:

edit2: Or is that why you're on about what you call things (vowel, consonant, etc.) Maye you should start a phonetics thread.
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digdug
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Vachtra wrote:
edit: And we're way off the topic of how people say UNID. :shock:
Yes, that's definitely off-topic.


edit2: Or is that why you're on about what you call things (vowel, consonant, etc.) Maye you should start a phonetics thread.
Maybe not, unless it's Iocrym Phonetics ! :P
Vachtra
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Syllabic consonants, in english, are for the most part, if not entirely (I haven't looked up every case), a show of the extreme laziness of english speakers.

I would like to break these down one by one.

Even: This is a case where, except for myself and actually many others, people are too lazy to pronounce the second "e".

Awful: Another one of those words people are just too lazy to pronounce correctly. There is a "u" there people. Use it.

Rhythm: This is originally not english at all and the spelling has been bastardized loosing the vowels that were once there, english laziness to the extreme. (note: english is germanic in origin and has picked up other language words along the way, sometimes mutilating them in the process.) Usually when I have heard this spoken, people will insert a short "i" or short "u" sound before the "m" although in french the vowel sound went after the "m".

Other parts of speech that english speakers are too lazy to say correctly are a whole group of words that end in "alk" or "aulk". Talk, walk, balk, caulk, chalk, stalk. I feel sorry for poor Peter Falk. I bet no one says his name right but he's probably too easy going to care.

I find it interesting that a dictionary doesn't tell people how to say a word correctly but instead tells people how the word has been said by someone that the person or persons who wrote it have heard recently. If you were to look in a dictionary from even fifty years ago the pronunciation of many of the words is different. if you went back a hundred years, the majority of the pronunciations are different.

Conclusion: Just because people are lazy doesn't mean it's right.
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For all I care, words can be spoken however one likes, as long as other people can understand it. Saying 'awful' with or without the u, should be fully within one's right to choose. Also, I don't believe that people will be too lazy to say a word with one more a/e/i/o/u sound, because that requires nothing more than saying the word without. It is simply a matter of preference. Why do you think they say it like that because they're lazy? Anyway, how words are spoken exactly shouldn't be too big a problem. As long as it can convey the meaning, you could use inamumiblaga for elephant if your audience understand it.

Also, languages changes and evolve.(mutate if you must.) Everything do, and nothing is permanent. Just because something is right fifty or hundred years ago doesn't mean it is right now. If you ask me, something is right when the majority agrees on it, at the present, not when an ancient manuscript says it is. Then again, I don't think there should be a single correct pronunciation for a word. Especially for an acronym like UNID. No matter if you pronounce it as yoo-nid or uh-nid, you can still understand it means UNID, because the alphabet U is called yoo, but can also be a symbol for the sound uh, ooh, ah, and a hundred more if you consider accents.
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Vachtra
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You're absolutely right. How a person says a word doesn't really matter as long as you can understand them.

How a word is supposed to be said is not how it is said. Instead it's a benchmark used to understand the hundred ways people say it. Without this benchmark you start to loose track of the words and you end up with the problem in so many areas where only a single group of maybe a few hundred people can understand each other. They form a new language entirely with only vague similarities to the original language it started out as. This is why knowing the correct way to say a word is vital for a language to continue especially when so many people use it.

A good example of this is perisian french vs. cajun french. In general cajuns can understand perisian french but not the other way around. My family has confirmed this for me since they speak cajun french and went to france on vacation a few years back. No one could understand a lick of what they were saying. The had to resort to using english.
Similarly I can't understand quite a bit of what some folks say around here since they drop so much of the words they're unrecognizable as words at times. This can cause problems especially in a professional environment.

As far as speech being lazy, it is lazy. I've challenged various students to speak more correctly and after only a few minutes they usually start to complain about a sore jaw. They then revert to the sloppy slurred speech so common today.

There is a lot of effort and work involved in saying words clearly and accurately.
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Atarlost
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Vachtra wrote:Conclusion: Just because people are lazy doesn't mean it's right.
No language is static unless all the speakers are dead.
Literally is the new Figuratively
Vachtra
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Just curious, if no language is static then why do we call them different names?
French should be called latin spoken by people in france and english should be german but not quite.
Technically what people speak around here should be labeled something besides english.

Languages spoken in this area: Hick, Gangsta, Yuppie, Mall Rat, Country (actually not the same as Hick), Professor, Para-Professional, Paranoid-Conspiracy-Theorist, Spanglish (northeast variety not to be confused with mid-central, south, far west, or california varieties), and Entrepreneur.

This is just a short list of languages spoken this week. An updated list will come out when the entrepreneur and paranoid conspiracy theorist get together and work it out.
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