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:
> [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.

Reply