Ray Brown wrote:
> Oh dear - there are a few confusions here :)
>
> On Monday, November 22, 2004, at 02:41 , Rene Uittenbogaard wrote:
>
>> I'm confused by the term "aspirated m".
[snip]
>> The orthography |mh| confuses me in the same way: is this [m_h],
>> [w]/[v], or a voiceless m?
>
> That depends on the language concerned. There is no one single way that
> |mh| is pronounced any more than there is one single way that |ch| is
> pronounced. If you imagine that |mh| is always pronounced the same, then
> indeed you will be confused. You have to know the spelling conventions of
> the language concerned.
Of course. What was I thinking? I probably wanted to find the answers to
all my questions at once. And indeed you gave them all :)
> To sum up:
> 1. The term 'apirated h' _is_ ambiguous, as Rene suspected. It may mean
> [m_h], but it may also mean "a sound that has resulted from earlier
> aspiration or fricativization of /m/". One simply has to be aware of the
> context.
> 2. There is no general pronunciation of |mh|. It varies from language to
> language.
I understand now how |mh| is pronounced in Gaelic and Brittonic
languages. I just hope I won't come across the term "aspirated m" on
some conlang page :-/
> (Also: the Gaelic & welsh sounds written |mh| are pronounced *very
> differently* and come from quite different origins)
To sum up:
Gaelic: |m| -> (soft mutation) |mh| /v/ or /w/;
Welsh: |p| -> (nasal mutation) |mh| /m_h/;
and incidentally:
Welsh: |m| -> (soft mutation) |f| /v/;
Welsh: |p| -> (spirant mutation) |f| /v/
Correct?
> Ray
Wow, thanks a lot, Ray! That was very enlightening.
Emoráni,
René