Re: Q about /c/

Javier BF wrote:

>> RM:  No. IPA [c] to me is a peculiar beast-- it's a voiceless stop,
>>basically a k but with the central part of the tongue contacting quite
>>far forward on the hard palate. Rather like the k of Engish "key".  If
>>you can hear any of the IPA websites, it seems in some cases to have a
>>bit of a y-like release, similar to but not as noticeable as in
>>English "cute".  There is a voiced counterpart, IPA "j with a crossbar",
>>roughly like English g in "geese".  Personally I suspect these occur
>>mainly as allophones of phonemic /k/ before front vowels, but if there
>>are languages where the two are distinctive, I'm sure someone will tell
>>us.
>>
>>
>
>Well, yes, of course there are languages where they
>are phonemic. Right off-hand:
>
>- Hungarian: spelled "ty" /c/ and "gy" /J\/, e.g. tyúk
>'hen', kutya 'dog', gyerek 'child', magyar 'Hungarian'.
>
>- Basque: spelled "tt" /c/ and "dd" /J\/, used mainly
>in hypocoristics, e.g. ttantta 'droplet', kuttun
>'little darling', Maddalen 'Maggie' (I'm only aware
>of _onddo_ 'mushroom' not being a hypocoristic).
>
>
>
>
Forget ye not the many Indic languages.

>> Spanish <ll> in most of South America is pronounced like English y
>>(IPA j), in some areas with a little more friction, XSAMPA "j\" I
>>think, and mainly in Argentina as a palatal fricative like French j,
>>that is, XSAMPA "Z".
>>
>>
>
>'Yeismo' (merging of <ll> and <y>) is widespread in
>all but a few areas of the Spanish-speaking world
>(mainly in non-urban areas of Castile and in bilingual
>areas where 'll' is shared with the other language,
>like Catalan, Quechua and Aymara). But merging them
>into [j] happens only in the US by direct influence
>of English. Where English is not part of everyday life,
>like in South America and Spain, pronouncing the /j\/
>phoneme as [j] is a clear signal of foreign accent.
>OTOH, you can pronounce it [dZ] and it would sound
>acceptable, only over-emphasized when not in absolute
>initial or after nasal, where a plosive/affricate (any
>of [J\], [J\j\] or [dZ]) is the expected allophone
>instead of a fricative ([j\] or [Z]]) (this allophonic
>distribution is parallel to that of /b/, /d/ and /g/).
>
>That is, English names like <Jane> and <John> are
>naturally rendered by Spanish speakers as what in
>Spanish we would spell <Yein> and <Yon>, because for
>us English <j> sounds like a perfectly valid allophone
>of Spanish <y>. While English <y> is what in Spanish
>is pronounced in the first syllable of <hierro> (meaning
>'iron') when pronounced carefully so as to distinguish
>it from <yerro> (meaning 'err'), but this opposition
>is on the wane, only present in a few rare pairs that
>nowadays many don't even care to distinguish, so most
>Spanish speakers will tend to pronounce English <yet>
>and <jet> just the same (both as [J\j\Et], [J\Et],
>[j\Et], [dZEt] or [ZEt], none as [jEt]).
>
>
>
>
Hmm.  Orbis Latinus claims that |y| is [j], as do a load of other sites,
a good chunk of dictionaries, and the tapes from my school Spanish
course.  Orbis Latinus also claims that the 'official' pronunciation in
España is that |ll| is [j], my teachers agree.

http://www.orbilat.com/Modern_Romance/Ibero-Romance/Spanish/Grammar/Spanish-Manners_and_Styles_of_Speech.html#Lleismo

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