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

Isidora Zamora wrote:

> At 07:38 PM 12/18/03 +0000, you 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?
>
>
> Well...for an intervocalic /d/...First of all, I think that the /d/ is
> produced laminally (with the tongue blade) instead of apically (with the
> tongue tip.)  This is the way that I started pronouncing them, because I
> sounded more like a native speaker if I pronounced it laminally.  I
> know we
> have at least one Dane on the list.  If he's reading this, perhaps he
> could
> chime in and transcribe the pronounciation of the vowels, because I have
> trouble transcribing those.  (And perhaps he can correct me if I'm wrong
> about the laminal articulation of /d/.)
>
> But for the intervocalic /d/ itself, place your tongue tip behind your
> lower teeth, and practice pronouncing a /d/ that way.  (There was a
> thread
> on this earlier this week when someone discovered the voiceless
> lamino-alveolar stop on his own and wondered what it was.)  Now turn the
> voiced stop into an approximate.  That's right, an approximate, not a
> voiced fricative.  It should sound a good deal like [D] but very clearly
> not be [D].  It's a lot blurrier than [D] and not articulated at the same
> point, nor with the same degree of stricture.  I'm not sure that I can do
> better than that.  Sorry.  It's a very peculiar sound.
>
> Isidora
>
>
So...it's a lamino-alveolar approximant?   [r\_m], perhaps?