On Thu, 15 Aug 2002, Chris Olson - SunPS wrote: #I am reminded by this of the various "tribes" of #the Sunami<sp> in Africa, whose language consists #less of "words" (as we would use the term) and more #of sounds, clicks of the tongue, and phonemes, combined #with words as well. Chris, I don't know where you got your information from, but it's incorrect. When I speak -- imagine that I am saying this to your ear, not typing it to your eye -- I produce spoken sounds that can be analyzed as phonemes of our language. This applies whatever language we're speaking. (Sign languages are subject to comparable analysis, but let's stick with spoken ones for now.) I'm about to simplify a bit, but not much. At one level, every word in this language is composed of phonemes, and its pronunciation can be described completely in terms of them. F'rex, using the SAMPA ASCII representation for American English, the word "phonemes" is pronounced "fonimz (The initial quotation mark is a symbol in its own right representing primary word stress.) In the languages of sub-Saharan Africa that have clicks, these clicks are part of the phonemic system of the language, just as much as the voiceless "th" sound of English "think" is part of our phonemic system, even though most other European languages don't have such a sound. Now imagine a French or German or Swedish or Hungarian person saying "The language of the English consists less of 'words' (as we would use the term) and more of sounds, obscure hisses of the tongue, and phonemes, combined with words as well." I won't try to rebut Chris's paragraph point by point. It is, not simply but richly and complexly, totally incorrect. -- Mark A. Mandel former Senior Linguist for Dragon Systems, Inc., speech recognition