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Re: CHAT: affricates/grammar help/intransitivity/free word order

From:Pascal A. Kramm <pkramm@...>
Date:Friday, December 31, 2004, 19:58
On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 08:29:39 +0100, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
wrote:

>On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 22:10:44 +0100, Steven Williams <feurieaux@...>
wrote:
>> What about 'Pferd' and 'Pfeil', for two examples? I've >> clearly heard them pronounced with an initial [pf], >> though that may be reduced to [f] in informal >> environments. > >*nods* Word-initial /pf)/ is [f] for me in informal speech -- >everywhere, I believe. Hence the saying "Ein Pferd heißt 'Pferd', weil >man darauf fährt", since "Pferd" and "fährt" are homophonous for me.
Yes, that's a good example.
>Using [pf] in that position is a mark of careful speech for me. (But I >don't claim to speak standard German, merely a dialect that's >conveniently close to standard German that I don't usually bother to >eliminate the dialect-specific bits of it; another example is my >turning morpheme final |g| into /x/ -- i.e. [C] or [x] -- as in "weg" >[vEC], "Weg" [ve:C], "Flugzeug" [fluxts)oYC].)
Same here :) Morpheme final g turns into /x/ most times, but can also turn into /C/ in a few cases. You already gave some good examples there, more would be: Tag /tax/, Krug /kRux/, Krieg /kRi:C/ ... Something I noticed when my grandfather was visiting recently was that he turned the g into /x/ exclusively and never into /C/, so he would say: Weg /wex/, Flugzeug /fluxts)oYx/, Krieg /kri:x/ etc.
>> Incidentally, what's with the extreme poverty of >> initial [x] in standard German? The only word I can >> think of is 'Chaos', which can either be [xa.os] or >> [ka.os], the latter pronunciation seeming to be the >> more common. > >TTBOMK, [k] is the only "correct" pronunciation in Standard German. I >believe that Swiss German has word-initial [x], though. (OTOH, >"Chemie" and "China" have [C] by standard German standards, though >some pronounce them with [k] -- and others with [S].)
It's generally /C/ here, but I've already heard it as /x/ many times, i.e. /xemi:/ und /xina/. My old Chemistry teacher in High schol some time back pronounced all ch like /x/, so he would also say /xemi:/.
>I think "Chuzpe" (chutzpah) has [x], but that's a loanword.
Yes, I'm quite positive that it is /x/. On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 16:29:13 +0100, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
>Quoting "Pascal A. Kramm" <pkramm@...>: > >> >German has the labiodental affricate [pf] >> >> Yes, but only in the middle of the word or at the end. Word-initial it is >> "f". > >Many varieties, yes. Duden German, no.
Duden German != spoken German in most areas. Not in all, but at least in a lot of cases, so you're better off not taking it as a guideline for anything. In essence, the Duden is quite useful to stop a desk or chair from wobbling, but it's very unsuitable to make qualitative statements about the actually spoken German. -- Pascal A. Kramm, author of: Chatiga: http://www.choton.org/chatiga/ Choton: http://www.choton.org Ichwara Prana: http://www.choton.org/ichwara/ Skälansk: http://www.choton.org/sk/ Advanced English: http://www.choton.org/ae/

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Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>