Re: NATLANG: Welsh <mh, nh, ngh> and French vowels

Jonathan Knibb wrote:

> Trebor wrote:
>
>> How do you pronounce Welsh <mh, nh, ngh>? Are they /m_0, n_0, N_0/,
>> /m_h,
>> n_h, N_h/, or something entirely different?
>
>
> I happened to be sitting across the office from a native Welsh speaker
> (originally
> from north Wales, near Pwllheli) who is also quite phonetically
> savvy*.  The
> fruits of
> ten minutes' discussion with him are as follows: these sequences are only
> found word-
> initially (unless perhaps across morpheme breaks in compounds), where
> they
> are
> the result of nasal mutation of /p/, /t/ and /k/ respectively.  Although
> this mutation
> is triggered by a preceding word, /nh/ and /Nh/ at least can occur
> utterance-initially,
> for example in the context of a vocative exclamation: 'Father!' / 'Nhad!'
>
> Rhys (the colleague in question) pronounces each one with a fully voiced
> nasal and
> a fully unvoiced /h/, whether following another word or not - i.e., [mh],
> [nh], [Nh].
> Though not a trained phonetician, I can't hear an obvious devoiced nasal
> segment.

Well, from the Welsh I've heard(not much, admittedly), it definitely
seems like [n_0_h], to me, in one phone.  If it was two(and I could
easily be wrong), the way I'd instinctively transcribe it would be [hn_0].

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