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Re: May I?
in reply to a message by Anon.
Lala is Indian in origin and lives in an English-speaking country (America) so she knows what she's talking about!
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I didn't know there was a racial theory of knowledge.
If there is anything in my post you don't understand, I'd be glad to explain.
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I got high distinctions in linguistics at university, thankyou, so I understood all of it. My POINT was that I'd trust Lala's judgement about these matters because she is part of an Indian family and has Indian friends, so her knowledge of the pronunciation of Indian names is based on knowing the language and, quite often, knowing people with those names.Your post also assumed that the letters assigned to Indian sounds in English are always consistent. That's not a good assumption as these names may not have been transposed at the same time. Witness Australian Aboriginal place-names, which have a plethora of spellings from different times, different ears and different understandings.
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Reading my own first post on this thread, I now realize it creates the impression that I doubted Lala actually knows the correct pronunciation of Devika. I never doubted this for one moment, I just think her attempt at writing down her knowledge was not quite succesful.
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Ah, hence our misunderstanding! :-)
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You say '(I) assumed that the letters assigned to Indian sounds in English are always consistent. That's not a good assumption'
It is a necessary assumption for any transcription-system to work.
All users need to agree from the start what each English letter (-combination) stands for. The system Lala used, 'Self-Pronouncing', is called self-pronouncing because every letter is pronounced in the most obvious English manner. By using 'th' for a dental plosive, Lala broke that rule. (And by using the same 'th' for 2 different sounds, 'd' and 't' she broke another).
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Will you stop now? i think we all get your point..Now i know what Lala ment, i know what you ment though i still have no idea what dental plosive means (makes me think of an explosive dentist) but i'm foreign so you can't blame me for that lol..Thank you a lot for explaining the pr's etc, but when it comes to the pr's i trust Lala because she is Indian and knows a lot about it...even though her explanations may not been very succesfully chosen...lol
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