ale vs. ala

[Will Koffel]

Has there been any consideration to making a change to ale or ala, with similarmotivation as iki->ona? I personally tend to confuse them in quick speech,either listening, or forgetting to clearly enunciate the differnce myself.Any thoughts? Do people see this as an analagous problem to iki/ike?-Will

[yerricde]

--- In tokipona@y..., Will Koffel <wkoffel@a...> wrote:> Has there been any consideration to making a change to ale or ala,> with similar motivation as iki->ona? I personally tend to confuse> them in quick speech, either listening, or forgetting to clearly> enunciate the differnce myself.At first, I thought the same thing, but then I realized that five-vowelphonologies typically have three underlying unstressed vowels (oftenwritten /a/, /e/, /o/).> Any thoughts? Do people see this as an analagous problem to iki/ike?<iki> vs. <ike> was a problem because unstressed <i> and <e> map nearlyallophonically to the same underlying vowel. <ala> vs. <ale> isn't asmuch of a problem because unstressed /a/ is psychoacoustically furtherfrom /e/ than /e/ from /i/.--Damian

[Yvonna Ware]

> > Any thoughts? Do people see this as an analagous problem to iki/ike?>> <iki> vs. <ike> was a problem because unstressed <i> and <e> map nearly> allophonically to the same underlying vowel. <ala> vs. <ale> isn't as> much of a problem because unstressed /a/ is psychoacoustically further> from /e/ than /e/ from /i/.In usage, it has bothered me... perhaps theoretically it should not, but Ipronounce 'ala' like 'allah'... 'alleh' is very close sounding when both areshort. Theoretically, I have no problem with it, and if I were to have morecommand of the language so that I did not tend to slur words because I amremembering them literally as I say them, it would probably not be an issue,so I do not believe it needs to be changed.I did not like 'iki', but for different reasons... I did not like the verballength of the word, compared to its usage as a quick pronoun. 'eekee' is avery distinct word that is hard to enounciate without slurring... with theusage it gets, that made it cumbersome. 'ona' is far friendlier to say.Yvon