Re: aspirated m?

On Monday, November 22, 2004, at 04:30 , Joe wrote:

> Sally Caves wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>> In Welsh, though, I think /mh/ is actually voiceless
>>> [m].
>>
>>
>>
>> In Welsh, there is no real aspirated "m"; phrases like fy mhen, "my
>> head,"
>> are pronounced /vVm'hEn/.  Like "some help."
[snip]
> In spoken Welsh, however 'fy' is often missed out, resulting in [mhen] -
> which could be an aspirated Nasal, I'm not sure.
If it ever is, it is marginal and not worth making a fuss about. More
precisely in fact it is the initial /v/ that is normally omitted in spoken
Welsh. It is usually shown in print as _'y_ and in practice the Welsh
proclitic for "my" is identical in pronunciation (tho not spelling) and
the nasal mutation it triggers with the preposition _yn_  "in". There are
several syntactical reasons why the two would never be confused, which are
not relevant here.

Also it is normal in Spoken Welsh to used the ordinary pronouns as
encltics after the noun possessed, except with words denoting closed
family relations, therefore: 'y ndad (my father), _but_ 'y mhen i (my head)
.

After vowels the _'y_ is certainly omitted: Blae mae'mhensil i? "Where's
my pencil?" It is also often ommited when imitial:
'Mhensil i yw hwn? "Is this _my pensil_?"
'Nhad! "Dad!"

But....
On Monday, November 22, 2004, at 08:11 , Sally Caves wrote:
> Isn't it more like 'm hen, though?  Like our "I'm happy"--which gets
> truncated to "m happy"?
Yes, it is.

> I don't believe I've ever heard a Welshman breathe
> out through his nose while uttering the initial nasal, a decidedly
> different
> sound.
> The latter is the sound I was describing in Teonaht.
I haven't heard it either. I have always heard the colloquial _nhw_ (they/
them) pronounced [nhu:] or [n=hu:]. In the 22 years I lived there, I never
heard the combos |mh| & |nh| pronounced as single sounds. As I said, the
Welsh regard these combinations as _two_ letters (not one 'letter' like
|th| or |rh| for example) representing _two_ sounds.

> Go back and read Ray's letter.
Thanks   :)

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On Monday, November 22, 2004, at 11:19 , Donald Goodman III wrote:

> I had been under the impression that it's
> always a voiceless [m].  Ditto for [nh] and [ngh].
Based on what evidence? It certainly runs contrary to the experience of
Sally and myself.

Indeed, while voiceless /m/ is not uncommon as an allophone, as for
example in English _small_, I do not know of any natural language in which
voiced & voiceless nasals are separate phonemes. I am _not_ making a
dogmatic statement that they do not exist - that would be foolish - I am
merely saying I do not know of any.

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

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