Re: USAGE: Flemish "g" (was: USAGE: Latin alphabet (Re: Chinese Dialect Question))

En réponse à James Campbell :


>I stand corrected [in my orthopaedic shoes]. My recollection is based on one
>2-day visit to friends-of-friends near Bruges, er, Brugge, 6 years ago. I'd
>been to the Hague the previous year and just about mastered Dutch "g", but
>was told by my hosts that the Flemish pronunciation was different. The
>example given was "regen", pronounced in Amsterdam /rE:G@/ but in Brugge
>/re:h@n/ (transcriptions very approximate, and, it would appear, entirely
>wrong). If anyone could clarify this I'd be very grateful.
I'd expect those to be [rex@] and [re:G@n] if my recollection of 
Amsterdamese is correct (I'm pretty sure they use [x] for "g" in Amsterdam 
though. I've been there quite often and their hard g is striking). As a 
rule, dialects above the rivers use the hard g [x], and dialects under the 
rivers use the soft g [G], and this is independent from national borders. 
By the rivers, I mean the Rhine and the Maas. So from Rotterdam and 
Northwards you get the hard g, and South of Rotterdam (i.e. the South of 
the Netherlands and Flanders) you get the soft g.

Note that The Hague (where I've been living for two years now) has 
definitely a hard g. So if you thought that it was a soft one, it's not 
surprising that you would confuse the true soft g with something else.

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

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