Re: CHAT: Rare Phonetics

Danny Wier wrote:
>
>This is an interest of mine, as most of yas know.  It's from a PDF document
>I
>found on languages that can be distinguished from others by the occurence
>of
>consonants and/or vowels not found in other languages.  451 languages are
>listed
>in the document.
>
>Some examples:
>
>Breton: some diphthongs: [Eo], [E~O~] (nasal), [aE], [a~O~] (also nasal)
>Bulgarian: palatized apical dental sibilant affricate [t[s[j]
>Burmese: the nasal diphthong [o~u~]
>Chuvash: ultrashort front mid-high rounded vowel [o/(]
>French: nasal front mid-low rounded vowel [oe~]
>Hmong: the diphthong [EM] and the prenasals [Nkh], [Nq], [Nqh], [n.t.s.],
>[n[t[s[h], [ntSh]
>Igbo: palatized non-rhotic tap [rj], breathy-voiced [b:jh] and [g:w]
>Irish Gaelic: [Bj], [F~w] (~ = velarized), [b~w], [m~w], [n~], [p~wh], [r~]
>Kashmiri: [@~:], [dZj], [i-~:] (long nasal barred i), [tSj]
>Khalkha Mongolian: [Ui] *a favorite diphthong of mine!
>Khmer: [e@], [M:] (M is supposed to be the high back unrounded vowel)
Isn't [e@] awefully close the diphthong in english words like "wear"?

>Korean: [s[~] (pharyngealized apical sibilant)
>Malagasy: [d.r?], [t.r?] (rhotacized and glottalized retroflex stops, I
>think)
>Mandarin: [cCh] (palatal affricate)
>Neo-Aramaic: [i6:], [u6:] (pharyngealized long vowels)
>Norwegian: [aeu-] (ae-barred u diphthong), [o/y] (slashed o-y), [u-:] (long
>barred u-)
Isn't Dutch {ui} slashed o-y? The long barred u is found in some Swedish
dialects.

>Romanian: [ea]
>Russian: [S~], [Z~] (pharyngealized postalveolars)
>Somali: [U-] (lax version of barred u), [d.~] (velarized retroflex d.)
>Uzbek: [B~] (velarized voiced bilabial fricative)
>Vietnamese: [iV], [uV], [MV] (V = inverted v, the mid-open back unrounded
>vowel)
>Zulu: [ls] (sibilantized l), [kL'] (lateralized velar ejective?)
>
>The language with the most unique phones is !Xou, with 65.
What's the total?

                                               Andreas
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