Re: Chinese Dialect Question

Quoting Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>:

> >BTW, my attempts to master uvular rhotics to the point I can use them in
> >connected speech have hitherto failed, but I believe my current cold has
> >taught
> >me to make a voiceless pharyngeal fricative ...
> >
> >                                              Andreas
>
> And, boy, are those voiceless pharyngeal fricatives useful when you're
> trying to speak German :-)
>
> Don't be too worried about the uvulars, Andreas.  If I could learn to use a
> Danish uvular /r/ in connected speech at the same time as I was also
> learning to make more than one variety of front rounded vowel and figuring
> out how to turn /d/'s into glottal stops, *and* how to make those
> *extremely* odd sounds that /t/ and /d/ turn into post- and
> intervocalically, then I'm sure that you can get just the [R].  You haven't
> been there very long, after all, and these things take a little time.
Well, there is one reason for worry; I've been hearing uvular "R" on and off
all my life from people from southern Sweden (incl my father when he's in
dialect mode) without picking it up. Still, that's no reason for giving up
trying; it's not like I've been doing any major attempts to master it before.

Tangentially, I'm under this impression that the further back in the mouth a
sound is produced, the harder it is to get for a non-native learner (with some
exceptions - getting [T] and [D] was really hard for me). Anyone else made the
same experience?

                                                        Andreas

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