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.
Could you send me a copy of this .pdf, please? I'd love to see it.

> 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)
> 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-)
> 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?)
To this I would add Mungayöd: [iI] diphthong
In the daugher languages, this sound is probably going to do one of two things:
1. Monopthize. [iI] -> [i@] -> [i]
2. [iI] -> [eI] -> [ej@]

Glïzxföösee has the potential to generate all sorts of bizzare consonant
combinations from clashes of circumfixional or agglutinative material.
My favorite so far is [gb], as in [g.bag"a.miSuTE.te], meaning "I love
you" (lit. I am loving you). The periods are morpheme boundaries.

--
Daniel Seriff
microtonal@sericap.com
http://members.tripod.com/microtonal

Honesty means never having to say "Please don't flush me down the toilet!"
                      - Bob the Dinosaur