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Re: Sound changes

From:Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
Date:Wednesday, August 28, 2002, 20:59
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 _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com

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BP Jonsson <bpj@...>