Re: Cómo se dice ther[o]pod y synapsid en español?

["Dora Smith" <villandra@austin.rr.com>]

Oh, no, LOL.  I've been going around this trying to learn how to understand 
Spanish speaking people in Austin.  The  great mystery was that Spanish 
dialects should SPELL the words differently.  I've not run into this before. 
Spanish is like English (only worse);  pronounced all sorts of ways but the 
spelling became standardized in late medieval times.    One version of the 
Spanish spelling of therapod that I was given was actually French.   I know 
French fairly well but, like the person who told me about it, I never 
recognized the words in the article as French.

French and Spanish are both dialects of ancient Latin.   Many of the words 
are different, and of course word endings are different, but it is within 
the realm of possibility for someone who knows both languages - or knows the 
other one fairly well - to make that mistake.   I was reading the article 
for comprehension and it never occurred to me to notice if it was the right 
language.

There are several major splits of pronunciation in spoken Spanish. 
Castillian Spanish, other varieties of Spanish, and Spanish as spoken in 
southwestern South America, for example, all of which are completely 
different to the Spanish of Mexico and the Southwestern U.S.   The most 
important differences are in the pronunciation of the weak consonants - y, 
h, x, l (esp ll), j.   Ch and j sounds that don't otherwise exist in 
Spanish, pop up alot in South America, and th sounds pop up alot in 
Castillian Spanish.   There is also a marked tendency of Castillian Spanish 
to morph every vowel sound into English ee.

Mexican and southwestern U.S. Spanish are completely different; basically 
more conservative, but sounds have evolved in more natural sounding ways. 
Unstressed vowel sounds and final vowels have tended toward being pronounced 
as schwa, on their way to becoming silent as they did in English.   ll is 
pronounced y, but that's the only major change that has taken place.

Yours,
Dora Smith
Austin, TX
tiggernut24@yahoo.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>
To: "DML" <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 9:59 AM
Subject: Re: Cómo se dice ther[o]pod y synapsid en español?


> >  So . . . hmm . . .
> >
> >  Die-no-NIK-us, Die-no-NYE-kus Die-NON-ikus
> >
> >  So German disallows one (or two) of those?
>
> Basically it disallows the middle one, because the number of ways to 
> pronounce Y is limited.