Re: USAGE: Latin alphabet (Re: Chinese Dialect Question)

Quoting Herman Miller <hmiller@...>:


> >I'm curious to see what inevitable exceptions people bring up.
>
> To give an example from the list's official language :-), there's the Dutch
> "g", which in some dialects is [x]. A few other exceptions that I can think
> of: "u" is [y] in French (not a back vowel) and a sound traditionally
> represented as [9] in Dutch (sounds more like [8] to me; in any case, it
> doesn't seem to be a high vowel or a back vowel, and the long "u" is [y]).
> In Swedish, "o" is a high back vowel (taking the place of "u", which has
> moved forward). "s" is [S] in Hungarian (where [s] is spelled "sz"), and
> "d" is [z] in Vietnamese, but of course these two aren't IE languages.
When talking about Swedish, let's not forget "g" and "k" being [j] and [S]
before front vowels (except in newer loans, like _kidnappa_ [k-] "to kidnap").
In French loans before front vowels, "g" can also be [x].

That "o" is high back rounded in Swedish is an oversimplification. It has two
long readings, namely [o:] and [u:], and the corresponding short ones [O] and
[U]. (no, you can't tell from spelling which pair a given "o" belongs to, altho
you can normally tell if it's long or short.) On top of which it's
labialized. "U", in some varieties, is a labialized front vowel - one could
perhaps X-SAMAPify it as [2_w]. (My 'lect has the less exotic pronunciations
[u\:] and [8].)

And then there's those really weird folks who use the so called "Viby-i". For
these people "i" and "y" are [z=] and [z_w=] ...

                                                 Andreas

                                            Andreas

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