Re: Alphabet

Jesse Bangs wrote:
>Why do people often think of the voiceless sounds as "hard" and the
>voiced ones as "soft"?  I've always thought of it the other way around.
Maybe because at least in Western langs the voiceless consonants tend to be
fortis and voiced ones lenis? (It's an open question if voicing is phonemic
in my idiolect of Swedish - for stops it's definitively the aspiration and
fortis/lenis that matters, fortis vs lenis seems to be the distinction
between /f/ and /v/ and /j/ vs /C/ seems to be semi-vowel (or approximant?)
vs fricative).

                                            Andreas

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