Re: Labiopalatalization

Steven Williams wrote:

> I believe both French and Mandarin have a
> labio-palatal approximant (I forget the X-SAMPA symbol
> for it, but the IPA symbol looks like the Cyrillic
> 'che'). It's not all that uncommon in world languages,
> come to think of it.
Voiced labial-palatal approximant ("turned h"). (C)XSAMPA is [H].

I don't know about Mandarin but French has it.

nuit [nHi] (night)
lui [pHi] (him)
acuité [akHite] (acuity)
et ainsi de suite... [e: E~si d_0sHit] (and so on...)

In my mouth the "d" sounds almost like [t] so I phonetized it as [d_0]
(devoiced [d])... err... only in this expression.

I was about to say that [H] is always followed by [i] in French but that's
not true.

les actualités [lE:zaktHalite] (the news)
factuel [faktHEl] (factual)

I also used it in my conlang Shaquelingua. I wanted an "alien" semi-vowel
but I can't turn other vowels than [i], [y] and [w] into semi-vowels.
Neither can IPA. Any way, [H] in not one of the so common [j] and [w]. That
qualifies it as "alien".  ;-)

See ya,

--
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Remi Villatel
maxilys_@_tele2.fr
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