(Brazilian Portuguese and Rhodrese

Hi!

Benct Philip Jonsson writes:
>...
> final-devoicing allophone [X]! :-)  No doubt that was how
> Brazilian [h] came about; as a devoiced allophone of /R/.
So lets wait for French to aquire [h] again. :-)

Actually, German starts to have this, but not for /R/, which is never
devoiced (rather, it sometimes becomes a vowel), but the intervocalic
_ch_ gets weaker and weaker.  I myself sometimes pronounce with such a
weak friction that it is close to /h/.  E.g. _brauchen_ ['bRaU)hn=].
The shift is not complete yet, though.

Note that there is no conflict with intervocalic /h/ in German,
because that one is long gone (cf. last spelling reform: _rauhe_ >
_raue_ etc.).

**Henrik

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