Re: OT: Definitely Not YAEPT: English phoneme inventory?

"Mark J. Reed" wrote:
> That was my understanding as well.  But what about borrowings?
In loan words, /tS/ and /t/ (and I think /ts/), as well as /p\/-/h/,
/d/-/dZ/ have become separated.  Some speakers also have [zi] and [si].

> The
> Japanese borrowed have the word "fan" (as in sports fan; actually, I've heard
> "fanatiku" more often, but the short form is also used), and pronounce
> it [p\an], and don't confuse it with "han".  That would seem to argue
> for [h] and [p\] being different phonemes...
True.  Borrowings have split the phones into two phonemes, unless you're
willing to accept two separate phonemic systems, "foreign" and
"native".  There are advantages to such a division, since it helps to
maintain unity in inflectional paradigms, such as [tatanai],
[tatSimasM_0], [tatsM_0], [tateba], [tato:] can be analyzed as
/tatanai/, /tatimasu/, /tatu/, /tateba/, /tato:/

> On the other hand, on that song I was transcribing there's a point where
> the lyrics say "hoshi" and the singer very clearly says [p\oSi], even
> though the vowel is /o/ rather than /u/.
Interesting.  Are there other words with /ho/ in that song, and if so,
does she say [ho] or [p\o] for those?

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