Re: Consonants and sonorants as vowels

On Tue, 2 Jul 2002, Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> En réponse à julien eychenne <eychenne.j@...>:
>
> >
> > Well, I was wondering about strange vowels we can find in some natural
> > languages, such as sonorants (e.g. /r, l, m, n.../)  and above all
> > consonants : I've heard of (african) languages which use sounds like /s,
> > z/ as vowels.
>
> Indeed. We've just had a discussion that Japanese also could have [s=]
> (syllabic s) as an allophone of /su/.
No, no. That is not a syllabic /s/. (I didn't know what the [=] mark
meant, I guess.) The vowel in that context is still there, but voiceless,
so basically nobody can hear it unless you are used to listening for them.
It shows up on a spectograph, but even after years of listening to
Japanese knowing it is there, I still can't hear it.

Marcus