Douglas Koller, Latin & French scripsit:
> According to S. Robert Ramsey's _The Languages of China_,
> Shanghainese's /-N/ indeed *can* be realized as nasalization (he
> says: "the word for 'square',...can be pronounced as either /fON1/ or
> /fO~1/.")
My comment was based solely on Ramsey.
> That [Mandarin] /N/ can be rendered nasalized is totally playing with my head --
> I've never experienced this on either side of the strait. Could you
> give an example?
Nope. I may quite simply be wrong.
One may say of my Chinese and my Chinese linguistics what Samuel Johnson
said (with far less justice) of Milton's "Tetrachordon" sonnets, viz.
"the first is contemptible, and the second not excellent." I quite
simply don't know any Chinese.
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