OT: Is English the only language that doesn't roll R's?

[Rich Grise]

The subject line pretty much says it all. I was musing
about my voice-spectrum thing, and the unrolled "r" sound
has a very strangely flat spectrum from 300-3K Hz.

I was thinking about consonants in that phoneme recognition
thing of a few minutes ago, and how they relate to the
transition from one phoneme to the next.

And that's when it occurred to me. Is there anyone on the planet
who can pronounce, for example, "occurred", without "rolling"
the 'r' sound? The only way to put this in courier would be
o-curd versus o-cudded. That's an extreme example - there are
subtleties involved, but I hope everybody gets my point.

BTW, I'm posting as the techie, but I do acknowledge that I'm
well-lubricated, and I did mark the post OT, and I hope that
it's relatively non-controversial - I'm trying to lighten up
on the really outre' stuff.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 17:50:11 GMT, Mac <foo@bar.net> wrote:

The French 'R' is not really rolled. It is very difficult for anglophones
to produce it without practice and training, but it doesn't resemble the
spanish or english 'R' at all. And in spanish, 'r' and 'rr' are really two
different sounds. With the 'rr', you have to aspirate and let your tongue
flutter a little to get the sound right.

My personal opinion about the content of your post is that it is OK
since you labeled it OT. It is potentially interesting and somewhat
technical and unlikely to offend or start a flame war here.

Rich never posts on-topic.

John

 

[Rich Webb]

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 11:07:51 -0800, John Larkin
<jjSNIPlarkin@highTHISlandPLEASEtechnology.XXX> wrote:

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 17:50:11 GMT, Mac <foo@bar.net> wrote:
[snip...snip...]
My personal opinion about the content of your post is that it is OK
since you labeled it OT. It is potentially interesting and somewhat
technical and unlikely to offend or start a flame war here.


Rich never posts on-topic.

Please try to constrain your posts to the current topic!

heh... <OK, I'll be good now>

--
Rich Webb Norfolk, VA

 

[Rich Grise]

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 20:08:14 +0000, Rich Webb wrote:

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 11:07:51 -0800, John Larkin
jjSNIPlarkin@highTHISlandPLEASEtechnology.XXX> wrote:

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 17:50:11 GMT, Mac <foo@bar.net> wrote:
[snip...snip...]
My personal opinion about the content of your post is that it is OK
since you labeled it OT. It is potentially interesting and somewhat
technical and unlikely to offend or start a flame war here.


Rich never posts on-topic.

Please try to constrain your posts to the current topic!

heh... <OK, I'll be good now

Well, I think John knows that's true - he's just having one of his
moods. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Joerg]

Hello Rich,

There is an area in Germany where it sounds just like in English. I believe somewhere in the state of Hessen.

Then, in most languages the transition from rolling to non-rolling or the other way around correlates pretty well with the amount of pints that had been consumed, with somewhat of a variance that relates to the rate of consumption ;-)

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

 

[Adrian Godwin]

John Larkin <jjSNIPlarkin@highthislandpleasetechnology.xxx> wrote:

I'm ready to buy WordPerfect or Star Office or something written by
competent programmers. Anybody got suggestions?

Try OpenOffice.org for free, and use it forever if it does what you want.
If you need slightly better compatibility with other people's Word
output, pay out for Star Office (which is essentially the same thing
with commercial support).

Alternatively, if your needs are simple, use Abiword. Also free,
and not so feature-heavy as the others.

-adrian

 

[Rich Grise]

On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 22:03:52 -0500, Spehro Pefhany wrote:

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 13:47:02 -0800, the renowned John Larkin
jjSNIPlarkin@highTHISlandPLEASEtechnology.XXX> wrote:


Well, I'm fine-tuning an especially tedious heap of assembly code, and
struggling with that &*&^%$#@ p.o.s. Word to try to get the manual
right, so snarl you very much, thanks.

The history-tracking thing in the current Word is a nightmare. Why
isn't there a Wizard with a single check box that says "Put Word into
the simplest possible type-what-you want mode"? The beast keeps
switching fonts, popping up cartoon animals, reminding me what I typed
3 weeks ago, adding paragraph numbers, adding blank pages, going away
on vacation at whim, and crashing. Even simple acts like backspacing
and deleting characters do the most bizarre things, often on another
line entirely. Don't even ask me about the built-in "Help" or I'm
liable to get crabby.

I'm ready to buy WordPerfect or Star Office or something written by
competent programmers. Anybody got suggestions?

John

If you're doing tables and stuff, check out Indesign. If you already
own Photoshop you can get an upgrade of Adobe CS (Creative Suite) with
Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign for around $500. Another couple
hundred if you want Acrobat pro and GoLive latest versions.

It won't do silly "Microsoft" stuff like reformatting when you change
the default printer.

Jesus, Spehro! For five hundred bucks, I'll draw your stuff for you!

Who are you idiots who _pay_ for _software_??? There are thousands of
programmers writing software and _giving it away_ even as we speak!

Well, yeah, it doesn't hand-hold the way the Doze stuff does, but what's
wrong with learning how to use your tools?

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Paul Burke]

John Woodgate wrote:

The 'r' phoneme varies a lot between languages, and is rolled in some
English accents and dialects - some Scottish ones, for example. In some
languages, rolled and unrolled are distinguished as separate phonemes.
French has the 'uvular r', which is characteristic, if not unique.

The French R is used by Geordies- and also some Germans have a very
similar one.

Paul Burke

 

[Rich Grise]

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 13:47:02 -0800, John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 21:03:54 GMT, Rich Grise <richgrise@example.net
On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 20:08:14 +0000, Rich Webb wrote:
On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 11:07:51 -0800, John Larkin
On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 17:50:11 GMT, Mac <foo@bar.net> wrote:
[snip...snip...]
My personal opinion about the content of your post is that it is OK
since you labeled it OT. It is potentially interesting and somewhat
technical and unlikely to offend or start a flame war here.

Rich never posts on-topic.

Please try to constrain your posts to the current topic!
heh... <OK, I'll be good now


Well, I think John knows that's true - he's just having one of his
^ - not (ahem).

moods. ;-)


Well, I'm fine-tuning an especially tedious heap of assembly code, and
struggling with that &*&^%$#@ p.o.s. Word to try to get the manual
right, so snarl you very much, thanks.

Word is absolutely the worst excuse for a word processor there is.

I _hope_ you're not trying to write your source code on it! That's what
notepad is for, or even edit in a command window.

The history-tracking thing in the current Word is a nightmare. Why
isn't there a Wizard with a single check box that says "Put Word into
the simplest possible type-what-you want mode"? The beast keeps
switching fonts, popping up cartoon animals, reminding me what I typed
3 weeks ago, adding paragraph numbers, adding blank pages, going away
on vacation at whim, and crashing. Even simple acts like backspacing
and deleting characters do the most bizarre things, often on another
line entirely. Don't even ask me about the built-in "Help" or I'm
liable to get crabby.

I'm ready to buy WordPerfect or Star Office or something written by
competent programmers. Anybody got suggestions?

Linux. ;-)

Or, Wordpad - it can handle RTF, and is much, much less of a nightmare
than Word.

Cheers!
Rich