Re: Sibilants (was: Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)

On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 10:10 PM, John Vertical <johnvertical@...>wrote:

>
> I find [s\] easier to pronounce than [S], BTW. I used to think I had the
> latter
> well down, as it's half-phonemic in Finnish anyway (compareable to the
> status
> of [x] in English) - but it turns out I'm actually pronouncing an *apical*
> postalveolar sibilant. Trying a laminal one tends to come off completely
> wrong-
> sounding.
>
> I've seen even [C] called a sibilant, but I can't really consider it such;
> it's
> basically [x_+] and [x] sure isn't sibilant in any sense. If there is a
> velar
> sibilant it's probably one of the realizations of the Swedish /x\/. (One of
> my
> first sketchlangs had this sound in voiced, voiceless and affricate
> forms...)
>
The sound it makes is pretty much s-like to my ears...


>
> And while I'm on the topic, are there postalveolar *non*-sibilants? An
> alveolar
> [T_-] seems to be possible, but not anything further back until we get to
> dorsal consonants. That's odd.
>

 That's probably due to the physica structure of our mouths and tongues. The
air channels don't get any wider in that range.

Eugene