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Re: retroflex consonants

From:Josh Brandt-Young <vionau@...>
Date:Tuesday, January 28, 2003, 21:10
Quoth Jan van Steenbergen:

> I have been under that assumption too, but then I was told by a native speaker > that Polish _sz_ and _z._ are alveolars and not retroflexes. > Czech, OTOH, is supposed to have retroflexes, I think.
I think it may be likely that the native speaker with whom you spoke wasn't looking at things from an objective point of view (in much the same way that a native English speaker, though clearly no one with linguistic training, might swear that "th" constitutes two sounds). There's a Pole in the Linguistics department here at Berkeley who has done all the analysis with spectrograms and whatnot, and confirms that they are *quite* retroflexed. But then, if they were alveolar, what would differentiate them from [s] and [z]? Czesc, Josh ---------- Josh Brandt-Young <vionau@...> "After the tempest I behold, once more, the weasel." (Mispronunciation of Ancient Greek)

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