Re: retroflex consonants

Josh Brandt-Young wrote:

>Curiously enough, two of my cousins (and I suspect they're not alone) have
>retroflex affricates instead of alveolars preceding /r/. I was reading a
>story the younger of the two had written last year, and noticed that she
>spelled "tree" as "chree" and "drive" as "jrive"; and a few tests were
>enough to show that these were at the same POA as the /r/. I think my /t/s
>and /d/s are somewhat retroflexish in these positions as well, though more
>in a Bengali than Sanskrit sense.
>
I do that too, but it's a definite /tS/ (postalveolar), not retroflex
(it's also rounded because of the rounding of /r/). Younger people who
haven't yet totally mastered the art of saying /r/ simply skip it,
saying /tS&in/ and /dZ&in/ for 'train' (and 'chain') and 'drain'.

I think Shreyas once commented (off-list) that he had a /tS/ for the /t/
in Portuguese, which I found odd (Americans should've made that /tju/
/tu/, not /tSu/), but he said it was the /r/ *before* it that did it.

Tristan.

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