Re: USAGE: (Mis)Naming a Language

From:    Carsten Becker <naranoieati@...>
On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 09:34:35 -0600, Muke Tever <hotblack@...> wrote:

> > and a Rhaeto-Romance language more commonly in English called "Ladin".
>
> Heh, you Americans would pronounce "Ladin" and "Latin" the same when
> speaking uncarefully ["l&:4In], wouldn't you?
As others have pointed out, this is not the case.  The conditioning
environment is more complicated than usually put (it also apparently
involves stress), but the phonetic tap [r] (NOT [d]) never surfaces
before syllabic nasal [n=], as in these words.  There, and only there
AFAICT, American English has a glottal stop.

Well, I'm off to the Algonquian Conference in Madison, WI.  I'll see
y'all's posts on Sunday.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637