Re: OBNatlang: German Pronunciation

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Elliott Lash <erelion12@Y...> wrote:

> First of all, I think her professor is Austrian, since
> she mentioned an expression "gru"ss gott" which she
> says was used in southern Germany and Austria as a
> greeting.
Yeah, it does sound Austrian.



> Furthermore my girlfriend pronounces words like:
>
> Tag    as /tag/
> Abend  as  /ab@nd/
> leid   as  /lajd/
> Ihnen  as  /ajn@n/
>
> where as i've always said:
>
> /tak/, /ab@nt/, /lajt/, /i:n@n/
It's /ta:k/, /'a:b@nt/, but yes, you're basically right,
those voiced sounds are devoiced at the end of a word.
It's something we hear in school, but don't believe at
first, because we associate voicelessness with aspiration
for stops.  =P

However (and this might be a "Swissism" of mine), I *do*
make a difference between Tag and *Tak.  The latter ends
in a decidedly stronger stop.  It's probably a bit
aspirated too.  For this reason, I prefer to write Tag
as /ta:g/ etc.  The devoicing is purely phonetic then,
not phonemic.

And /ajn@n/ is just very very wrong.  ;-)



-- Christian Thalmann