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Re: CHAT: Rare Phonetics

From:J Matthew Pearson <pearson@...>
Date:Friday, June 22, 2001, 18:37
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: > [snip]
> Malagasy: [d.r?], [t.r?] (rhotacized and glottalized retroflex stops, I think)
Ah yes. I've always had trouble characterising Malagasy /tr/ and /dr/. English speakers tend to pronounce them [tS] and [dZ], respectively, but that's not quite right. They're definitely less rounded and less affricated than the English sounds. I've always suspected that they're retroflex, but as far as I know, nobody's ever done any palatography studies to confirm that. When I try to reproduce them, I end up making retroflex stops with a faintly rhotic release, so that's how I generally describe them. They don't sound especially glottalised to me. Matt.

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Muke Tever <alrivera@...>