Re: CHAT: Humor, inter alia

On Tue, 9 Mar 1999 01:31:19 -0600 Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
writes:

>>Finnish has IIRC voiceless
>>plosives /p/, /t/, /k/ but only _one_ voiced
>>plosive /d/.  But it has at least two nasals /n/
>>and /m/ and I'm fairly certain (or is it too lazy
>>to check :) that /N/ is also phonemic.
>I think I've read somewhere, though, that [b] and [g] occur
>allophonicly.
>FWIW.
My fairly in-depth studies of Finnish have never revealed the presence of
[b] or [g] in *any* circumstances whatsoever in native words. [N:] is
indeed phonemic, being represented by the digraph "ng." It's interesting
to note that the /d/ phoneme is realized in some dialects as [D] when it
has come into being as the result of consonant mutation: "uida" can
become [uiDA?]. This would, then, seem to be a language with three
phonemic nasals [m] [n] [N] and *no* voiced oral stops.

Pretty odd.

----------
Josh Brandt-Young <neonwave7@...>
http://geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/6073/
"After the tempest, I behold, once more, the weasel."
(Mispronunciation of Ancient Greek)

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