Hi!
Remi Villatel <maxilys@...> writes:
> 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.
An example would be 'yuan' [HEn] and 'quan' [ts\HEn].
> 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". ;-)
What about turning [A] into a pharyngeal semivowel (maybe [?\], but
that's the fricative. It still sometimes sounds like an approximant,
but there is no CXS, I think)? :-) I personally find pharyngeals
quite interesting.
**Henrik