Re: Basque & Katzner's Languages of the World

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>>> .  In particular, I wish his phonological descriptions (which are very
>>> anglocentric, perhaps not surprisingly) had used IPA instead of fuzzy
>>> things like "There is both a soft r and a hard r" in Basque.  Which
>>> brings
>>> me to my question: for those who know (something about) Basque, what the
>>> heck is he talking about?  Trilled and non-trilled?  Trilled vs.
>>> approximant?  Meep?
I just bought R.L.(Larry) Trask's "History of Basque" an incredibly complete
and as far as I can tell accurate work (a budget-buster, alas).  Very
conservative, no wild-blue-yonder stuff, in fact he demolishes most of
everyone's speculations about the language.   Apparently there is a tapped r
(written "r") and a trilled one "rr".  The odd thing to me is that they can
contrast word-finally (I suspect it has to do with what happens when a
suffix is added, since it seems they're written "-r" in both cases, unless
I've misread.)  They also contrast medially of course, but not initially; in
fact Basque dislikes initial r:  Lat. rege- 'king' > errege.  Modern Spanish
loans excepted.
Fascinating book, TOTALLY fascinating language.

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