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Re: Voiced Velar Fricative

From:Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...>
Date:Sunday, October 22, 2000, 23:46
Barry Garcia wrote:
> I borrowed a book through interlibrary loan (from The University of Texas > at Arlington, BTW) on my grandfather's dialect of Visayan (A Philippine > Language) called "Aklanon" (Akeanon), and it says that it includes a > unique sound among the West Visayan Languages, which is the voiced velar > fricative. It tells how to make the sound, but i just cant seem to do it. > What other languages have this sound (better yet, where can I hear this > sound on the web)?
But don't you speak Spanish, Barry? Spanish has this sound, or at least something very very close to it. For instance, the <g> in <abogado> comes very close to a voiced velar fricative. Like all the other voiced stops in Spanish, <g> is lenited in intervocalic position. In some dialects, they are lenited so much that they are approximants, in others, they are fricatives. So <abogado> ought to be pronounced [aBoGaDo] (where [B][G][D] are voiced fricative/approximants). Perhaps its because the sound is an allophone of <g> that you don't realize that you are able to make that sound? -kristian- 8)