Herm-oh-ninny

[macloudt at yahoo.co.uk]

No: HPFGUIDX 26925

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., rcraigharman at h... wrote:
> Taking my lead from http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~vladimir/bul-pron.txt
> 
> Bulg English
> Lett Phon    Examples       Explanation
> h    [h]     Hala, Hrian    Like [h] in Happy or [x] in Scottish 
LoCH
> e    [e]     morE, sEno     Like in bEtter
> r    [r]     Rob, bRat      Vibrating, somewhat like bRibe
> m    [m]     More, kaMyk
> a    [a]     mAjka          Like the first sound in [ai] (fIne)
> y    [schwa] YgYl, sYr
> n    [n]     Nar, koN
> i    [i]     nIt, tI        Like in bIt
> 
> (Bulgarian in transliteration)
> 
> Seems like Krum had all the needed phonemes to approximate Hermione
> better than he does, unlike your French students whose native 
English
> phoneme set doesn't distinguish ou, eu, and u....
> 
> ....Craig

Oh, dear, I'm being anal retentive again...Just because Bulgarian 
contains the *individual* sounds of Hermione's name doesn't mean that 
Krum is capable of pronouncing the sounds *in that particular 
order*.  The brain may recognize the letters and sounds, but the 
mouth just doesn't want to know if the individual is not used to 
pronouncing those sounds in those orders.  How many of us would be 
able to pronounce *Bulgarian* like a native?  Again, it's something 
that stumps adults but not kids.

Further follows a request from a brain-deficient Muggle...what 
does "deus ex machina" actually mean?

Cheers!

Mary Ann
(who is far too Freudian for her own good)