Re: Sound changes

Teoh wrote:
>
>On Sun, Aug 25, 2002 at 05:47:06PM +0000, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > Teoh wrote:
> > >
> > >On Sat, Aug 24, 2002 at 12:17:27PM +0000, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > >[snip]
> > >> The Cantonese name _Ng_? Please tell that there's a vowel missing
>here
> > >> somewhere - a word  [N=] ought to be illegal!
> > >[snip]
> > >
> > >No, I believe it *is* [N=]. In fact, my own mother tongue has it too.
>[N=]
> > >(rising tone) means "yellow". Although in my generation, it has become
> > >[u~j~i~] instead.
> > >
> >
> > Well, that leaves us with no choice - we must imprison all Cantonese
> > speakers as well as all older-generation speakers of your mothertongue
> > (which I fail to recall what it is) ... :-)
>[snip]
>
>Well, imprisoned or not, we will continue to inflict upon the world our
>language, which differentiates between aspirated, non-aspirated, voiced,
>and unvoiced stops, differentiates between nasal and non-nasal vowels, and
>is TONAL (7 tones, no less!),
Does that mean that you've got four series of stops? Neat, if so. As for
tones, I'm tone-deaf, and so couldn't care less ... :-)

>and of course, which has cute words like
>         [N=]    (low rising) "yellow" (it is actually pronounced [?N=], if
>                 that makes you happy :-P)
>         [m=]    (low level) "not" (borrowed from Cantonese)
>         [mN=]   (low rising) "gate", in my generation it has mutated into
>                 [mu~i~].
>         [sN=]   (high rising) "to waste" (which still remains that way in
>                 my generation) -- with the older generation it also has
>                 the obsolete meaning "to play".
>         [tN=]   (low falling) "hot", "scalding"
>         [pN=]   (low falling) "rice"
>         [nN=]   (high falling) "people", as in, [kaki.nN=] "own people",
>                 used as a way to identify oneself as part of an inner
>                 circle.
>         [k_hN=] (mid level) "hole", "pit".
>
>Don't you just love the last two? And tonal too, no less. :-P
I somehow feel that [tN=] etc are are rather lesser crimes against humanity
that [N=] by itself. And you still fail to say what your native language
actually is!

                                                      Andreas

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