Re: What's your favorite sounding word in any language?

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 19:38:31  0000 Joe <joe@...> wrote.
>Isidora Zamora wrote:
>
>> My favorite is probably the Danish word "marmalade" for the way that it
>> shows off the intervocallic allophone of /d/ in the Danish
>> language.  Sorry, no transcription available, because the sound is so
>> unusual that there isn't any standard (nor, prehaps, any non-standard)
>> transcription of it.
>>
>> Isidora
>>
>Well, surely you must be able to describe it.   How does one articulate it?
Absent an actual working knowledge of Danish, but having heard it spoke on
more than one occasion, I'd hazard at a voiced laminal alveolar approximant
if I were to attempt it. Maybe verging on a fricative. Kinda on the border
between the two, the more I try to sound it out. Short, too. Can you have a
tapped fricative?

However, I have been remarkably far off target on guessing pronunciations
lately (mentioning no specific instance(s)) so take this as nothing more
than my trying to join in and see if I guessed right.



Paul