From owner-freebsd-chat Sun Apr 9 9:10:53 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from news-ma.rhein-neckar.de (news-ma.rhein-neckar.de [193.197.90.3]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8C99B37B7DE for ; Sun, 9 Apr 2000 09:10:30 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from daemon@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de) Received: from bigeye.rhein-neckar.de (uucp@localhost) by news-ma.rhein-neckar.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with bsmtp id SAA19020 for freebsd-chat@freebsd.org; Sun, 9 Apr 2000 18:09:39 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from daemon@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by bigeye.rhein-neckar.de (8.9.3/8.9.3) id QAA56591 for freebsd-chat@freebsd.org; Sun, 9 Apr 2000 16:07:53 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from daemon) From: naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de (Christian Weisgerber) Subject: Re: BSDCon East Date: 9 Apr 2000 16:07:53 +0200 Message-ID: <8cq2rp$1n81$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> References: <20000404152346.01398@techunix.technion.ac.il> <20000407102159.B8417@sofia.csl.sri.com> <38EE4C97.B9B83C7A@asme.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Pedro F. Giffuni wrote: > > I would like to introduce you all to a language where there is NO > > difference between spelling and pronunciation: Italian. > > I am not sure this is true: the "gn" in the word "gnomo" is pronounced > like the "ñ" in Spanish. But that's strictly regular. Yes, Italian uses a variety of digraphs. Remember the Roman alphabet was only really suited to writing classical Latin. For other languages, it's just a hack. > I also understand you (actually we, since in theory I am Italian > also) don't extrictly have a "z" since in Italian this is pronounced > "ts". 's' is [s] in front of vowels and voiceless consonants, [z] in front of voiced consonants. My tiny Italian dictionary also says it's either [s] or [z] between vowels according to no particular rules. I don't know whether this means that it's up to the speaker or whether you just need to know. Apparently the distinction is only phonemic, not phonemic, so there's probably little harm if you get it wrong. -- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message