Re: Chinese Dialect Question

On Thu, 2 Oct 2003 22:36:12 +0200, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:

>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?
I think it's just the trills. I don't have a problem with the Klingon
uvular sounds, but voiced uvular trills are really difficult for me (harder
than clicks, ejectives, pharyngeal fricatives, or doubly articulated
stops!) The only sound I have a harder time with than the uvular trill is
the bilabial trill (not counting the trills that aren't shaded out on the
IPA chart but don't have any symbols, which would be even harder if they're
even possible to pronounce).

But it does seem that there áre quite a few difficult sounds in the back of
the mouth, like [L\], [R\], [X\], [?\], [>\], and the "green frog" sound,
[G\_<]. Another sound I had a hard time learning is [k]: learning nót to
aspirate it, and to hear an unaspirated [k] as [k] rather than [g]. I
didn't have as much trouble with [p] and [t].

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