Re: Question about word-initial velar nasal

(Sorry, this first went direct to Philip - GMail Reply-To header)

Philip Newton wrote at 2004-11-04 07:00:02 (+0100)
 > On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 02:31:38 +0000, Tim May <butsuri@...> wrote:
 > > Danny Wier wrote at 2004-10-24 06:38:00 (-0500)
 > >  > From: "Tim May"
 > >  >
 > >  > > Incidentally, what languages _do_ allow /N/ initally?
 > >  > > Offhand, I can only think of Vietnamese and Tibetan, and
 > >  > > it's a tricky thing to look up.
 > >  >
 > >  > Albanian, and I have no idea how that happened.
 > >
 > > Really?  How is this indicated in Albanian writing?  I've just
 > > been looking into the language, and I can't see any mention of
 > > it.
 >
 > "ng", I suppose.
 >
 > At any rate, http://www.google.com/search?q=nga+site%3Aal finds a
 > number of hits for the word "nga" in Albanian sites.
 >

That's very interesting.  It certainly appears that "nga" is an
Albanian word - it seems to be a preposition meaning "from" "of" or
"by".

On the other hand, the UPSID profile for Albanian doesn't list a velar
nasal
http://www.langmaker.com/db/ups_albanian.htm
and none of the pronunciation guides I can find describe either a
velar nasal phoneme or an "ng" digraph.  Which leaves me wondering how
"nga" is pronounced.


 > (Strangely enough, it also finds a number of sentences containing
 > e-dot, which I had only known from Lithuanian -- I only know
 > e-umlaut for Albanian. Maybe a dialect compromise meaning "some
 > dialects pronounce this /ë/, others /e/"?)
 >
 > Cheers,
 > --
 > Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
 > Watch the Reply-To!

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