Re: OT: Phonetics (IPA)

My leave of absence was a bit premature, it turned out.  I'm back for
now. :)

On Sat, Jul 12, 2003 at 09:25:55PM +0100, michael poxon wrote:
> I've never heard /t/ + /S/ as /tS/. Compare (pardon the indelicate example!)
> "catch it" with "cat shit".
The main difference between those two to me is one of emphasis - the
former has two syllables with stress on the former and the "i" in the
latter reduced to a schwa, whereas in the latter the stress is much
closer to equal and the vowel is not reduced:  /'k&tS@t/ vs. /'k&t'SIt/

For a better example without the spurious differences, remove the "it" -
just contrast "catch" with "catsh"  (as in the stereotypical drunk
person's/Sean Connery's pronunciation of "cats").

> A plus for that version of the IPA that
> transliterates /tS/ as c-hacek, emphasising the fact that this is one
> phoneme, not two.
It is certainly true that most English speakers consider /tS/ and
/dZ/ to be individual sounds, while at the same time recognizing that
the sound of the letter "x" is just /ks/ (sometimes voiced as [gz]).
But I think it's still an open question whether the distinction
is really phonemic.  In any case, though, even in the
standard IPA notation I usually see affricates represented with an
overhead tie bar, which may be represented in X-SAMPA as /t_S/, /d_Z/,
etc, though I don't usually use or see that on here. (I guess none of
the diacritic _ + letter pairs in X-SAMPA are fricatives?)

Do Germans hear "z" as /t/ + /s/ (just as English-speakers hear "x" as
/k/ + /s/) or do they consider it a separate sound /t_s/ like we do with
/t_S/ and /d_Z/?

Incidentally, my favorite affricate by far is /t_K/, as in Klingon
"tlh".  I could just sit around making that sound all day:
/bAt_K:d`A'qAUlu?tAx:/ . . .

-Mark

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