Re: Phonology

 --- Marcel Bollmann wrote:

> The voiced velar fricative, I think it's [G] in X-SAMPA, is represented
> by "g" in Spanish (and possibly other languages), at least as far as I
> know. Unfortunately, I don't know Spanish or any other language that has
> this sound... However, it somehow feels like an "r" to me, and I've been
> thinking of making [G] at least one realization of the phoneme /r/ in my
> conlang.
The association with |r| is not so strange, taking into consideration that
in quite a few languages there is a strong interaction between them two.
Obviously, many people prefer to replace the "normal" alveolar trill [r]
with an uvular trill [R\], because this sound is produced in the back of
the mouth (personally, I find it rather uncomfortable, but hey, I don't
mind sounding like an Austrian when I speak German). When this trill is
pronounced without actually trilling it, it easily can become (degenerate
if you like) a voiced fricative, either uvular [R] or velar [G].

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--- Kou wrote:

> Géarthnuns offers both, with "r" as the Mom's apple pie trill, and
> "rh" as what I've described as a very breathy Parisian "r" (unvoiced,
> as in "battre"). I thought maybe Dutch "gr" might come close, but I
> don't have a native Dutch speaker around to verify if this is the
> sound I'm trying to describe. Suffice it to say that there are two
> Géarthnuns "r's" and they are phonemically distinct.
Grrrrrr... No, the [G]-sound is quite a Fremdkörper in Dutch, as is
the word "Fremdkörper" itself. But you can hear a lot of them when a
Dutch person is speaking German or French. Theoretically, it could
appear in Dutch as well, but this would sound a little strange to me.
What we do have in Dutch, very common in southern dialects (including
Flemish) is the so-called "soft g", but they are pronounced like
palatal fricatives, either voiced [j\] or unvoiced [C] (the German ich-
Laut). However, they substitute |g|, not |r|.

Jan

=====
"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought,
wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that
happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great
comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." --- J.
Michael Straczynski

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