Re: Phonology

 --- Christophe wrote:

> Well, that's against everything I've been taught, whether by my Dutch teacher
> or by most Dutch people I know. Dutch "g" *is* /G/. Only in the North of the
> Netherlands it is realised [x] (and in ABN, it's supposed to be [G]).
I must frankly admit, that I *am* a northerner. My pronunciation is [x], indeed.
But don't teach me ABN, because I am sufficiently informed about it to know,
that standard pronunciation of the Dutch |g| *is* [x]. Besides, ABN is based
upon north-western pronunciation almost exclusively.

> Strange, my friend uses it all the time when he speaks Dutch. Didn't you hear
> it?
This might sound strange, especially for a lingu-freak like me, but when I listen
to people I completely forget to pay attention to their accents. I'm probably too
much used to people with accents ;)

> That is not true! My friend is from Brabant, and his "soft g" is certainly not
> palatal! It's clearly a voiced velar fricative! His parents, who speak a
> dialect very close to Flemish (they live at 5km from the Belgian border) also
> use only a voiced velar fricative. It's a sound I can recognise very easily
> from palatal fricatives (I personally like it, while palatal fricatives give me
> bumps! :)) ), so I'm sure of what I say. And I've lived in Eindhoven and
> everyone I heard there used a voiced velar fricative for "g", no palatal in
> sight. In fact, I've never heard a Dutch person using a palatal fricative,
> except when speaking German.
Well, you could be right here. Perhaps it's just my northerner's perception.
Probably I'm spoiled by my best friend, who is a Limburger, and whose Dutch is
full of palatal fricatives ;)

Jan

NB: Great, one thread added to the growing family of threads ending up in a
discussion about Dutch :)))


=====
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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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