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Re: Phonology

From:Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>
Date:Friday, April 26, 2002, 9:21
 --- 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 :))) ===== "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 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com

Replies

John Cowan <jcowan@...>Beating the Dutch
Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>