Re: I'm finally asking (re French)

On Nov 11, 10:38 pm, Harlan Messinger
....
English-speakers who haven't studied the matter aren't
explicitly aware of the glide that distinguishes our vowel from the
similar-sounding one in those languages. In informal phonetic
representations, the "y" in "ey" isn't standing on its own to represent
the glide.

All right, then someone who should know better, teacher or book
publisher, is teaching them crap and should be stopped.

What difference does it make what convention is used as long as it's a
commonly understood convention?

Commonly understood by Anglos (speaking of the glide). Worthless here,
where the aim should be to be within the common convention of French.

Similarly, "eh" to represent the pronunciation of the
"e" in "best" is understood to represent what we perceive as a single
sound, not as a vowel followed by an aspiration.

And what you need is just an understandable single sound of e in best,
no aspiration or curlicues.

Since each vowel has multiple pronunciations, it isn't that easy, is it?

Why? As in every case, all you do is detemine the understandable range
of the foreign phoneme and recommend a sound that falls within it.
Luckily here you only have to choose a single e-E-etc. for all F [e]
or [E]. For example e as in there. Done.

.

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