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The message .com
from "La Puce" contains these words:
Nick Maclaren wrote:

I know a lot of people who find the converse is true - the difficulty
of Polish consonants is usually overstated.

I started French only medium-early, at nine, under a retired colonel
whose Hindi-Urdu was pretty shit-hot as far as we could judge, but whose
Latin accent was totally un-Romance, and whose French accent fell a long
way short, as I later discovered when I moved on to better-qualified
teachers at thirteen. But when I gained fluency as a young man,
non-French people thought I was French, and the French couldn't quite
place me, usually plumping for Belgian: that's a perfectly achievable
and honorable target.

What is interesting is that I can repeat Chinese words perfectly well
because the French sounds already have 'en', 'on', 'ai', 'eu' and I
sometime wonder if I could learn it. The idea of a new alphabet,
culture etc. is attracting. However, I cannot do German.

I spent a whole mealtime once trying to pronounce 'iolaire' to the
satisfaction of my host.

A Gaelic word, it means 'eagle', and is pronounced something like 'eeel-ugth'.

--
Rusty
Direct reply to: horrid dot squeak snailything zetnet point co period uk
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In message , Rusty Hinge
2 writes

A Gaelic word, it means 'eagle', and is pronounced something like
'eeel-ugth'.

I've never been quite certain whether Gaelic orthography is even more
baroque that English, or whether it's just different.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

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The message
from Stewart Robert Hinsley contains these words:
In message , Rusty Hinge
2 writes

A Gaelic word, it means 'eagle', and is pronounced something like
'eeel-ugth'.

I've never been quite certain whether Gaelic orthography is even more
baroque that English, or whether it's just different.

It's certainly 'different'.

Aspirated letters at the beginning of a word tend to take a 'V' sound -
Bh***, Mh*** etc and in the middle or end it usually disappears
completely, as in bithidh - pronounced (more-or-less) as the English
'be' and ceilidh - cay-ley.

The rules are really quite rigid within the bounds of local dialect, and
various combinations of letters always (AFAIK) indicate the same sound -
none of this 'plough, enough, cough, dough' etc. as in English.

'C' is always hard, and there is no H, J, K, Q, V, W, X, Y or Z.

However, as Macalpine says under 'H':

H, h, This letter is not acknowledged in our alphabet; but to keep the
Gaelic in character with us, the Highlanders, who are THE BRAVEST and
/most singular/ people in the WHOLE WORLD, (as the Scots Times says,) it
is used, not only in every word, but in almost every syllable expressed
or understood.

HTH

--
Rusty
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In article ,
Rusty Hinge 2 wrote:
The message
from Stewart Robert Hinsley contains these words:
In message , Rusty Hinge
2 writes

A Gaelic word, it means 'eagle', and is pronounced something like
'eeel-ugth'.

I've never been quite certain whether Gaelic orthography is even more
baroque that English, or whether it's just different.

It's certainly 'different'.

It's also (in the case of Scottish Gaelic) a modern invention, and
reflects the views of the inventors as much as anything. There
was no written tradition of consequence before 2-300 years ago.
That was not the case in Ireland, of course.

The rules are really quite rigid within the bounds of local dialect, and
various combinations of letters always (AFAIK) indicate the same sound -
none of this 'plough, enough, cough, dough' etc. as in English.

That is generally a sign of an artificial orthography. Natural ones
tend to have more inconsistencies.

One can speculate why English became as bizarre as it is, but the
Victorian dogmatism was only the culmination of a formalisation of
inchoate conventions. It was already half-formalised (and wildly
inconsistent) in Shakespeare's day.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

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Having an old car with an old car radio I can drive around Southern
England listening to French Radio (162 & 184 Long Wave) as audible
wallpaper.

Sometimes I can even understand some of it !

Phil Slade.

I googled SussexGardener

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Rusty Hinge 2 wrote:

Ah - booze-cruise with an ulterior motive?

Read that as 'booze cruise with an indoor movie...'. Btw, you are the
proud father of a lot of lil' honesties and chillies :o)

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The message .com
from "La Puce" contains these words:

Read that as 'booze cruise with an indoor movie...'. Btw, you are the
proud father of a lot of lil' honesties and chillies :o)


Coo! What are we going to call them?

--
Rusty
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