Re: Sound changes

Douglas Koller wrote:
>
>Andreas wrote:
>
>>Teoh wrote:
>
>>>What about having 7 tones? :-P
>>
>>As said, I'm practically tone-deaf, and so two, seven or eighty-five tones
>>make little difference to me.
>
>Dude, aren't you Swedish? You can't distinguish between "anden", "the
>soul", and "anden", "the wild duck"? We've dipped our toe into this
>water before, but I believe one can speak fluent Chinese (pick a
>dialect, any dialect) and still mortify people at the karaoké bar.
>Tone-deafness, in my humble opinion which is my own, is not really an
>issue here.
Well, I can distinguish between them, most of the time, but I'm very hard
pressed to tell exactly what's the difference. I think what I hear is mainly
that the second syllable of _anden_ "the wild duck" is a bit less unstressed
than that of _anden_ "the spirit". Also, the number of minimal pairs for
this distinction is quite low, and context is usually more than enough to
tell the difference for these.

                                                     Andreas

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