Re: OT Van Gogh (was: Yogh in the news)

 On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 Henrik Theiling wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...> writes:
> > The distinction between [v_0] and [f] being, I presume, one of laxity?
>
> Exactly.
>
> One of the interesting phonemic distinctions in Dutch.  Another one I
> particularly like is
>
>     /x/ vs /r/ vs /xr/
>
> with the side note that many dialects have [X] for /x/ and [R] for
> /r/, so you get
>
>     [X] vs [R] vs [XR]
>
>     goot   [XoU)t]  - poured; gutter
>     rood   [RoU)t]  - red
>     groot  [XRoU)t] - big
>
> Very funny. :-)
What fun!  My very good Dutch-born Aussie friend
way back in high school (1960s) told me that the
Dutch resistance was able to trap German "plants"
by their pronunciation of "Scheveningen", his home
town.  Try as they might, only the more linguistically
adept could overcome the habit of years, to avoid
pronouncing the "Sch" as [S].

So now we have a new test, for quickly determining
a Dutch speaker's dialect: ask him or her how to say
"a big red gutter" in Dutch ... :-)


> > As I said, the usual American pronunciation is [v&n gou].  I
> > personally have tended to pronounce it [fVn gOG]; I shall endeavor to
> > use [xOx] in the future. :)
>
> Hehe.
>
> (BTW, In German, it's usually pronounced [fan gOX].)
Very close to my usual pronunciation; I think most Aussies
say [v?n gOf] (the [?] as in "apple"; what's the CXS for
that?), whereas I'd tend to say [fan gOX].  Obviously, the
[g] is wrong!


Regards,
Yahya

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