Hi!
"J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...> writes:
>...
> >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.
Ok.
> >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 don't use [x] in German at all. It's plain [X] for me. So I don't
think I'm cheated by German ears here: [x] is foreign to me -- it is
not a realisation of German /x/ phoneme for me -- and is clearly
different from [C], which rings the typical 'palatal' bell that [x]
does not ring. It might ring the Russian accent bell, however. :-)
> 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].
Well, I could do it, although the Spanish sound was foreign to me. I
did not mix it up with any of my German phonemes.
**Henrik