Re: Russian phonetics question [Was: What's SHCH?]

Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Would that be Swedish-style sublaminal retroflexes? Or Indian-style
ones, which,
> IIUC, are apical?
Not a slightest idea. Phonetics is not my strong point. I always have
had more interest in morphology, and we were taught no course in General
Phonetics at the Kiev University - only a course in your main foreign
language phonetics, and some basic phonetics in the General Linguistics
course. After that one we even had a "phonetic dictation" to check our
IPA knowledge, and I managed to get 96% :)) so my ear is good at
hearing, but bad at describing...

So, I'm not sure if Russian |sh| and |zh| are indeed retroflexes. They
sound similarly to Polish |sz| and |z.| we discussed a year ago (Jan?)
and came to conclusion they were retroflex. They are NOT apical - I've
heard Hindi speaking guys, they are different. Some Russian textbooks
describe them as "two-focused". I'm afraid the authors mean they show
certain glottalization or velarization as a co-articulation. If so, then
a cross-tilde (CXS _e) would be the best notation for it.

You can try to compare them also in this way:
- Russian |sh| and |zh| have the same additional articulatory feature as
Russian |l|;
- Russian |l| is the same as Arabic "hard" |l|;
- Arabic "hard" |l| is "emphatic" as the other emphatics;
- Arabic emphatics are usu. velarized or glottalized,
ergo,
- Russian |sh| and |zh| are velarized or glottalized.

-- Yitzik