Re: OT: Phonetics (IPA)

On Sat, 2003-07-12 at 18:56, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> Quoting Joe <joe@...>:
>
> > AFAIK, this is a pretty common confusion in languages with retroflexes.
> > However, I, as a native English speaker, would place dentals and alveolars
> > together, and retroflexes seperately, whereas evidently you would place
> > retroflexes and alveolars together, and dentals seperately.
>
> I might point out that for me, whose native language distinguishes dentals and
> retroflexes (regardless of whether we phonemize [t`] as /rt/ - it still
> contrasts with [t_d] /t/), alveolars sounds like dentals, not retroflexes.
Is that influenced by the way it's written though? I know it shouldn't
be, but a number of the more blatant differences between American and
Australian English (rhoticness, for example) are harder to hear than the
subtle ones for me (when not listening for them) and make it harder to
recognise an <r> as worth paying attention to before a consonant if I'm
just randomly listening, no matter the value of said <r> (i.e. [r],
[r\], [r\`], [4], [R\], [R]...). Stupid brain interfering again...

--
Tristan.

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