Re: Simafiran "r"

En réponse à Steve Kramer <scooter@...>:

>
> It concerns the letter "r".  Up until now, this has been what I was
> guess
> is a velar approximant - the same sound it makes in French.
Nope. The French 'r' is an uvular fricative, nearer to the throat than a velar
articulation. Though I admit they sound quite a bit like each other. But I'm
sure of what I say since I articulate my 'r' rather behind my 'k' :)) .

  But I've
> noticed that it tends to drift a bit depending on the letters I put
> around
> it.  In the middle of words it tends to be surrounded by vowels because
> of
> Simafira's phonological constraints - which right now are [(h)+(C)+V+
> (l,m,n,r)] for each syllable - it tends to stay "soft" for lack of a
> better word.  Like the French "r" or even the Japanese "r" - though
> unlike
> some dialects of Japanese it stops short of becoming a /d/ sound.
>
Do you mean that it's advanced to alveolar position? (where it would become
then a flap, X-SAMPA /4/) Or do you mean just that it become so short that it
sounds nearly like a flap between two vowels, though staying back in the mouth?

> At the end of words, or at the end of syllables when the next syllable
> begins with a consonant, the "r" hardens up.  It also acquires
> something
> of a trill, though I cannot in fact roll my r's at all.  I've seen
> descriptions of a "tap" or "flap", though in the recordings I have, it
> simply sounds like an "r" sound read quickly.
>
It may become an uvular trill, the so-called "Parisian 'r'". It has the same
place of articulation as the normal uvular fricative of French, but it does
sound 'harder' to me (for an example of it, listen to any song of Edith Piaf,
she had quite a strong uvular trill :)) ). And since it's rather back in the
mouth, it doesn't really feel like you're rolling your 'r'.

> I'm experimenting with the sounds to see if they can switch places and
> not
> violate my mostly-in-my-head ideas of the sounds of my language...
>
So far what you described doesn't seem unnatural to me. In all languages having
only one rhotic, this one tend to had allophonic variations depending on the
surrounding. Usually the speakers themselves don't realize it and treat all
those variations as a single phoneme. So in fact, you're not breaking the rule:
one letter-one sound. This rule works only on the phonemic level. On the
phonetic level (the actual sounds), you cannot prevent having allophonic
variations. The different sounds influence each other due to the movements of
the speech organs to produce the different segments one after the other. Some
do it little, or your ear is not trained to hear the difference, but others can
do it a lot, and you may hear the difference. Still, it's the same phenomenon
and it shouldn't bother you. It's perfectly normal and as long as the
allophonic variations don't come to interfere with another phoneme (for
instance, the allophonic variations of your 'r' would be a problem if you had
also a phonemic flap /4/), it doesn't break the 'rule': one letter-one sound,
as long as you remember that it's a phonemic and not a phonetic rule.

Well, I hope I didn't confuse you more than you were. Please tell me if my
explanations were clear enough :) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.