PHONO: Nasal assimilation (was: An incongruent orthography: Maggel)
| From: | Jonathan Knibb <jonathan_knibb@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, April 9, 2002, 21:58 |
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Roger Mills wrote:
>>>
John Cowan wrote:
>
>I take this to be the sound of "n" in Italian "inferno". All Italian
>nasals adopt the place of articulation of a following consonant
>(and thus any m/n distinction is neutralized) and that even across
>word boundaries: "con Paulo e con Carlo" is /com'pauloecoN'karlo/.
>So "nf" is pronounced with a labiodental nasal.
Ditto in Spanish, though speakers seem to vary [n] ~ [N] before /x/.
<<<
Erm, ditto in my English (L1) pronunciation! Am I unusual in this? I had
been labouring under the assumption that this phenomenon was basically
universal.
Jonathan.
'O dear white children casual as birds,
Playing among the ruined languages...'
Auden/Britten, 'Hymn to St. Cecilia'
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