Re: USAGE: German VhC pronunciation

On Tue, 3 Aug 2004 12:35:40 +0200, Carsten Becker
<post@...> wrote:
> From: "John Cowan" <jcowan@...>
>
>  > Mark P. Line scripsit:
>  >
>  > > The digraph 'aa' occurs in
>  > > 'Staat', but I can't think of more examples for that one either.)
>  >
>  > Poking through
>  > ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/doc/dict/german-wordlist.new.gz ,
>  > which is just a wordlist, not a dictionary, I find the following roots
>  > (capitalizations are lost): staat, paar, saat, saal, haar, waage,
>  > waagen, isaak, maar, maas, aal, staal.
>
> I only know "Wagen" (car/cart) or "wagen" (to dare)
I interpreted "Waage" as "scales, balance" (what you weight something
on) and "Waagen" as its plural.

> And Philip Newton, I'd say even ["fARAt] in everyday speech.
Hm. Now that I think about it, the first vowel may indeed be short
when I'm talking normally.

But I think that even in careful speech, it only becomes ["fA:RAt],
not ["fA:RA:t] or ["fA:RRA:t]. (NB I'm not sure about [a] vs [A] in my
speech. I followed your example in this case. Mine may be more [a],
though.)

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