> Van: Christophe Grandsire
> Onderwerp: Re: Koningin
>
> En réponse à Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>:
>
> >
> > To be honest, I have never noticed any such problem.
>
> Yet it's around your place of living that it happens most :)) .
Well, I have no problem pronouncing it either...
> But that's the main problem. Most Dutch people pronounce [N] only at the
end of
> a word. Cases like |koningin| are an exception to that rule.
Only at the end of a word??? How about words like:
zingen -> ['zI.N@n] (to sing)
hangen -> ['hA.N@n] (to hang)
longen -> ['lo.N@n] (lungs)
lengte -> ['lEN.t@] (lenght)
menging -> ['mE.NIN] (mixing)
langzaam -> ['lAN.sam] (slow)
bank -> ['bANk] (bank)
kanker -> ['kAN.k@r] (cancer)
rancune -> [rAN.'ky.n@] (rancour)
mango -> [mAN.gO] (though sometimes also [mAn.xO] or [mAN.xo]) (mango)
> > Perhaps this is a southern problem as well? (Gosh, it seems that those
> > Brabanders and Limburgers really have a problem pronouncing their own
> > language :))) )
>
> No, I've noticed that in the South they tend to pronounce the word without
a
> problem (and in general, I find that Southerners have a much clearer
> pronunciation of Dutch than Northerners.
But we all know this is a general bias you have. Maybe this is because you
learnt your Dutch primarly from a southener boyfriend? The whole question is
who or what defines the proper language. As the large majority of the people
in The Netherlands are not southeners, and since all these people usually
perceive southern speech as differing from the common standard, I disagree
with you. We even name some sounds using southern locatives (such as
"Limburgse or Brabantse g" as opposed to "gewone g").
> The Northerners tend to swallow their
> syllables a little too much for me to follow them. So if someone in
Holland has
> problems pronouncing their own language, it's not in the South that you'll
find
> them :)) ). The report I'm referring to was done in The Hague, Amsterdam
and
> Rotterdam :))). The pronunciations I heard in that report ranged from
> [konigin] to [koniniN] passing by [koniNgin].
???? Well, those sound absolutely foreign to me!!! The first and third sound
like a foreigner unable to pronounce [x] and [G] and the second like a child
who switches sounds from one syllable to the next.
I know that people in Brabant and Limburg (the south) have a tendency to
pronounce it [kO.n@.GIn] instead of [kO.nI.Nin]. Some Hollanders may
pronounce it [kO.n@.xIn], and that sounds rather uneducated to me.
> But there were still people who could pronounce it without a problem. But
the whole point is that
> even the ones who pronounced it correctly were not sure that they were
> pronouncing it OK, and admitted it to be a difficult word.
Well, not as much difficult, I think, as ambiguous. Both forms with [N] and
[x]) should be easy to pronounce, but many people may not be sure as to
which one is the correct option.
I have no