Re: OFF-TOPIC: Misspoken... Sort Of

Quoting Danny Wier <dawiertx@...>:


> Someone once said that the local (i.e. Gulf Arabic) pronunciation of Qatar
> is ['GVt_eVr], with a voiced uvular stop. Maybe it's unvoiced, but emphatic
> voiceless stops consonants are unaspirated while non-emphatic voiceless
> stops are aspirated in Arabic, generally. And to me, an unaspirated
> voiceless stop doesn't sound very different than its voiced counterpart, me
> being an Anglophone and all.
That would be [G\Vt_eVr] - [G] is a velar fric.

I read somewhere that [G\] is the original pronunciation of Arabic 'q', and that
the Gulf 'lect are conservative in maintaining it. No clue as to the reliability
of that factoid.

                                                   Andreas