Re: RV: Old English

At 11:16 28.3.2000 -0500, Carlos Thompson wrote:

>Many dictionaries use IPA hooked and tailed lowercase h, (I guess is /x\/ in
>X-SAMPA), defined as both /S/ and /x/, my teachers (Stockholm) usually used
>a combined sound but AFAIK in northern Sweden the sound is more /S/ and in
>the South is more like /x/.
Correct.  I'm from north of Gothenburg (west coast) where the precise sound
is more like [x_w] (labialized).  Some people also have [S_w], and there
used to be a gender difference between male [x_w] and female [S_w]!

>Any how, as longer as you can make a contrast
>between <sj> /x\/, and <tj> /C/, things are _okej_. even pronouncing <sj> as
>[S] and <tj> as [tS] you would sound funny but people would understand you.
Not all that funny, since that's the mapping used by native Swedish
speakers from Finland.  There are prejudices against them, but as long as
you sound generally foreign...


>Any how, the [S] -> [x] change has happened in Spanish, I wonder if there
>was a [x\] transition.
AFAIK the only other natlang which has the sound (which I ASCIIfy as [$]
due to frequent use!) is Paxhto, where it is in dialectal variation with
[.s].  As might be guessed the sound occurs in the name of the language,
also spelled Pashto.  The _xh_ spelling is to show off that you know about
the sound! ;-)


/BP

"Doubt grows with knowledge" -Goethe