Re: Pronunciation of Japanese "j"

Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:

> At 01:08 7.12.2003, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> >Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:
> >
> > > >But unless my memory is failing me completely, finlandssvenska tends
> > to [S]
> > > >for /S/ and [C] for /C/?
> > >
> > > AFAIK they have [s\] and [ts\] respectively,
> > > which makes it kind of weird from a Rikssvenska
> > > perspective.
> >
> >Kind of weird yes. Hm, I guess my memory is then really failing; I find it
> >hard to believe I'd hear any affricate as [C].
>
> Your expectations of what it 'should' be. Listerners
> do that all the time!
Of course, and the fact I was rather less pheneticall aware back in the days I
heard anyone of Finnish extraction with any frequency. But missing the stop
part of an affricate is pretty bad nonetheless. Unless many other Swedes I've
run across, I've never had any trouble telling English /tS/ and /S/ or
German /ts/ and /z/ appart.

OTOH, one of the weirder effects on my Swedish of learning German has been to
introduce initial [ts] in a few words like _tsar_; I used to say [sA:r`].

> Strangely I have never heard any Swedish /C/=[S] speaker.
> I'll have to listen out for it!  (FWIW I had to have the
> Oslo S/C merger pointed out to me before hearing it...)
I've not got any statistics, but I'm of the impression it's a common
pronunciation. Commoner that /S/=[S], at any rate!

An English-language presentation of Swedish I read a while ago gave [s`] for
both /C/ and /rs/ as the "Standard" pronunciation. I doubt I'd notice that
merger if I wasn't conciously paying attention to phonetic detail; is it
something you've been noticing?

> >Indeed. Again, person/number agreement on verbs have always been one of the
> >things I find difficult in foreign languages; today I caught myself saying
> >_ich köntest_, which probably is enough to drive any real German to
> despair.
>
> Wait until they hear me, with a native pronunciation,
> mix up the genders and imperfekte! :)
That might indeed be something to hear.

My pronunciation is certainly not perfect, but good enough Germans have
started continue to believe I'm German after speaking with me for a while. My
impression is that Germans require more mangling of their language before
the "Foreigner" lightbuld goes on than does Swedes.

                                                 Andreas