Hi,
I wrote:
>Romance-language speakers perceive basically 5 vowels and put any vowels
into those pre-conceived categories<
And Lloyd asked:
> Is that not 7 vowels? It seems reasonable to include "awe" (IPA as
backward /c/) and "EH" (IPA as /E/<
That's why I said 'basically'! hehe
In Portuguese, we have 11 vowels ( counting open and closed 'e' and 'o' and
all 4 nasal counterparts ). Spanish, on the other hand, has 5 vowels only.
Italian seems to have seven, but 2 of them vary dialetically, if I'm not
wrong.
But anyway, take a look at the comparison below:
English X Italian
iy + I x i ( different from you iy, I think )
ae + E x e
a + upside-down V + schwa x a ( different from your 'a', as far as I'm
concerned )
uw + U x u
Me:
> As an example, Romance-language speakers tend to perceive words like
'live' and 'leave' as homophones due to those 5 vowel categories cited
above<
Loyd:
> Exactly correct. My experience with native Italians supports this,
> for whatevet that is worth<
Both sounds ( /iy/ and /I/ ) are high front vowels. As such, they're
'categorized' by our brains as the single-standing member we have in that
slot: the /i/ sound.
Me:
> Italian, as a Romance language, shares those 5 vowel categories;
Him:
> Or is it 7 vowels as I mention above?
Again, I think all their dialects share 3 vowels while their 'e' and 'o'
vary locally. It's already been talked about on the list, but I don't
remember exactly what was concluded.
Me:
>6. Italian opera was created to entertain or enlighten an Italian-speaking
audience. As such, that audience perceives only those 5 vowel categories;
Him:
> See above
Anyway, none of those 7 vowels get overlapped when vowel modification comes
into play. That's not true of English.
Me:
>7. Italian opera has taken advantage of those categories in order to adapt
vowel resonance and create harmonics necessary to project the voice above
the orchestra. That's what an evolutionary sociologist, using a jargon
adapted from evolutionary biologists, might call a cultural pre-adaptation,
a.k.a. a big favorable coincidence! hehe>
Him:
> I am not sure about the cultural pre-adaptation idea but the first part
of this paragraph is partly true. ... It is these resonance peaks, called
"vowel formants" that gives each vowel sound its identity. These identities
can be given many names and some languages tend to lump similar vowels
sounds into a few categories
while other languages tend to create many categories. Italian is an
example of the former and English an example of the latter.<
I think you just brilliantly ( as usual ) rephrased the very basis of my
argument ( thank you! I'd have never been able to do that! hehe ), but you
didn't actually say anything against it ( supposing that's what you meant to
do! ).
I'll put that another way. Supposing opera had developed in England, not in
Italy, and it still had a perfectionist esthetic ideal, don't you think they
wouldn't have thought of doing performances in big theaters and with big
orchestras because of the toll taken by vowel modification on comprehension
of English words?
Don't you think it was the PERCEPTION of vowels by Italian speakers that
allowed them to think of vowel modification as an ACCEPTABLE solution, a
solution that wouldn't go against all the esthetic ideal they cultivated?
It's probably hard for you, as an American in the 20th... ops... 21st
century ( I almost forgot that! ), understand what it means to be influenced
by another culture considered to be more prestigious, no matter how
ridiculous the consequences may be. San Remo Festival is only the tip of the
iceberg! Imagine an Italian bluesman singing something like "Io te voglio
bene, baby"! hehe
In the 18th and 19th centuries, however, Germanic and Anglo-Saxon Westerners
had Latin and all the civilization related to it as superior, and tried to
mirror it. Much of the nonsense in your prescriptive grammar comes from that
effort to 'latinize' English. I don't think it was much different in other
areas, like music, where Italians were considered to be more developed.
Me:
> Most English speakers don't speak Italian, so vowel modifications in
Italian operas are meaningless to them. Obviously, the same can't be said of
operas in English<
Him:
> I am not sure if I understand correctly what you mean here. Singers
> who have English as their native language are perhaps more aware of
> vowel modifications done by Italian singers because, to the English
> speaking singer these modifications sound like different vowels.
You're talking about singers, who probably speak Italian, but I'm talking
about the audience, who generally doesn't!
Italian singers could modify vowels and they themselves wouldn't notice them
as a different vowel, neither would their audience. English-speaking
audiences ( they generally don't speak Italian ) won't notice vowel
modifications in Italian as such, but they WILL SURELY notice that when
listening to an opera in English.
I'm suggesting that it's that 'italianizing ideal' ( a.k.a. 'anachronical
cultural colonization' ) that makes it possible for you to accept in
English and for English-speaking audiences something that is acceptable in
Italian ONLY DUE TO the peculiarities of the Italian audience ( how THEY
perceive vowels ).
It's like a rich woman wearing fur in Brazil just because she saw that in an
American movie! This is a tropical country!
Him:
> English speaking singers modify vowels because the acoustics
> of vowels does not allow otherwise if the voice is to be heard and it
> is not considered an imperfection. But to those learning to sing, it
> does appear as a distortion of the spoken vowel. To the listener it
> does not appear as a distortion<
Do you mean that singing 'lIve' or something similar to that when it was
supposed to be 'lEAve' does not appear as a distortion to 'unbiased' English
speakers? Don't you think that it must be no more than tolerated, as
something singers JUST do, not really perceived as 'not distorted'?
>But
> amplification of the voice is an option because amplification
> precludes a voice singing at maximum efficiency. In fact,
> amplification does not allow a voice to sing with maximum efficiency.<
I don't get that! Why not?????????
>Opera in English and other languages is not only succeeding
> but growing by leaps and bounds in the United States. It is the fast
> growing performance art in the USA. And though amplification is used
> at times to overcome a venue that was not designed for opera, because
> in the past opera was not very popular in the US, that is not yet the
> norm.<
Mmm... but now you're talking about demand ( market ), not art! When I
talked about perfection X imperfection and you answered with ?'s I meant
that difference. As an art, not entertainment, opera singing aims at
achieving the most in the art of singing without sacrificing any esthetic
aspects ( I'm assuming that you assume that too! ). Of course, there's no
such thing as a culturally-unbiased form of art, so whether that kind of
sacrifice happens or not depends on the culture you're referring to. In the
case of vowel modification, perceptions from each audience vary, and,
CONSEQUENTLY, so should the art form. You said English-speaking audiences
don't feel that as an imperfection, or distorted, but, honestly, I don't see
you and most posters waiver that lack of demand for perfection by the
audience when miking is under analysis.
Miking and vowel modification are two competing solutions to the very same
problem: allowing the audience to hear the singers. Miking goes against a
perfection ideal in voice production, and you don't seem to accept it
regardless of what the audiences think of it; vowel modification in operas
sung in English goes against that ideal in another aspect, comprehension,
but your reaction is exactly the opposite. Mmmm!!!!! hehe
Me:
>I think I got you, baby! hehe
Him:
> I am sure we all appreciate the competition reflected in your last
> statement but I choose to consider this forum as a discussion or even
> an argument but never a competition.
Relax, Lloyd! That was a joke ( I assumed you assumed that 'hehe' meant
that! ). I can assure you that, although I was born with a competition
processor in my brain, like most people, my mind is by Microsoft so it
doesn't take much advantage of that hardware.
Always a pleasure,
Caio Rossi
Sao Paulo, BRazil
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