A Little Learning Is a Dangerous Thing

[stoutfellow]

The passage below is from David Weber's Ashes of Victory. A (supposed) xenolinguist is speaking to a non-linguist.

What we call a 'phoneme' is the smallest bit of sound that may change or alter meaning, which usually means a vowel or consonant, and phonemes vary from language to language... In Spanish, the 'sp' phoneme never begins a word; in Standard English, however, that's quite a common beginning sound.

I know there's at least one person who reads this who will understand my exasperation.

Comments

[ex_gryphon136]

Um, doesn't "Spain" start with an sp?

[stoutfellow]

Yes, but "Spain" isn't a Spanish word. The linguist in the book is making a valid point: Spanish isn't hospitable to initial s+consonant clusters, and usually inserts a preceding "e": "Esteban" ("Stephen"), "escuela" ("school"), "espero" ("I hope", from Latin "spero"). All well and good - but "sp" isn't a "smallest bit of sound that may change or alter meaning", since it's composed of an "s" and a "p".