Re: USAGE: German VhC pronunciation

On Mon, 2 Aug 2004 20:58:04 +0200, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> As for 'a' for /a:/, there's quite a few - 'Rat', 'Rad', 'Tag', 'mag', etc.
Though some of those become [a] in colloquial speech - for example,
I'd pronounce those words as [Ra:t Rat tax ma:k].

I'm not sure what conditions this, though; I don't think I'd pronounce
|Rat| as [Rat], though |Rad| = [Rat] is probably more common in my
colloquial speech than [Ra:t]. Similarly, I'd say [fa:Rat] for
|Fahrrad| nearly always; having [Ra:t] in there sounds weird, while
I'd accept [Ra:t] for |Rad| in more careful speech even though I'd say
[Rat] is the norm in "normal" speech.

And I'd pronounce |mag|, [ma:k] in isolation but would pronounce it
[max] in some contexts, though I can't say just when. (This renders it
homophonous with |mach|, of course.) That pronunciation isn't nearly
as common as [ma:k], though, for me.

|Tag| = [tax] is probably most common in the greeting "Tag!"
(abbreviation of "Guten Tag!", where that word varies |ta:k| ~ |tax|
for me).

So I'm not sure what this says, but "single |a| followed by one
consonant = [a:]" is not as ubiquitous in my speech as in standard
German.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>