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Re: Voiced Velar Fricative

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Thursday, December 19, 2002, 18:27
Quoting Christopher Bates <christopher.bates@...>:

> Is gh (i don't know the ascii ways of representing IPA sounds, but I > mean a voiced velar fricative) common? I think english used to have the > sound, as did welsh (or at least g used to be mutated to gh a long time > ago) but for some reason it disappeared. I just wondered because I love > the sound for some reason but I don't want to add it if its extremely > uncommon in natural languages. Thanks in advance,
The sound is not at all rare, actually. It is somewhat marked, just as any voiced fricative would be, but I can think of languages from widely spread families that have it (e.g. Georgian, Coast Tsimshian, Arabic etc). ========================================================================= Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally, Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. Chicago, IL 60637