On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 03:57:41 +0100, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
...
>"J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...> writes:
...
>> To me it's not surpruising that a language with a velar-uvular contrast
>> and with a alveolar-postalveolar contrast lacks palatal sounds. The
>> palate would result exceedingly crowded.
>
>Hehe. But in English, the /T/-/s/-/S/ contrast also occurs in a
>crowded area of the mouth. As Basque's /s_a/-/s_m/-/S/.
It's normal that languages distinguish many tip of the tonge points of
articulation (especially in fricatives), but it's unusual that there are
more than two back of the tongue points of articulation.
>I think /C/
>is so much different from /x/ that a contrast would be feasible.
You might be cheated by your German ears. I believe that German /x/ often
tends to be [X]. At least I think I can observe that I pronounce my German
/x/ further back in the mouth than my German /k/.
I have a very hard time to pronounce Spanish the voiced velar fricative [G]
correctly since my German mouth prefers to pronounce a voiced uvular
fricative [R].
gry@s:
j. 'mach' wust