Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

/H/ (was: An Unknown Conlang)

From:DOUGLAS KOLLER <laokou@...>
Date:Thursday, July 6, 2000, 21:22
From: "Christophe Grandsire"

> >> If you want, I can give you a sketch of this language. Its phonology > >> is > >> interesting too, containing the phonemes /y/ and /H/ (the French 'u' > >> - or > >> German 'ü' - and its semivowel conterpart, the semivowel in French > >> 'lui').
> >You know, I looked hard but found no language that contained the
/inverted-h/
> >phoneme outside of French. Until I discovered it in Abkhaz. And Abkhaz > has A > >LOT of consonants.
> I've heard that some Tibetan languages, and maybe even some Chinese > languages had it? Am I wrong?
Mandarin certainly has it, after the palatal series and, rarely, after "n" and "l". Shanghainese has it to a more limited extent after palatals. Cantonese has /y/, but not /H/ -- can't think of any examples anyway. Taiwanese doesn't even have /y/. I can't speak for other dialects or Tibetan. Kou