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Re: Chinese Dialect Question

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Thursday, October 2, 2003, 19:33
Quoting Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>:

> En réponse à Paul Bennett : > > > >On the question of different points of articulation, French distinguishes > >between a > >voiced uvular fricative and an alveolar trill. German has alveolar trill, > >uvular trill, > >uvular friactive and an asyllabic unrounded open central vowel. Norwegian > has > >alveolar trill and uvular trill. Welsh has a phonemic contrast between > >voiced and > >voiceless {r} and {rh}. Upper Sorbian has /R/ and /S_j/ for {r} and > >{r-caron}. Lower > >Sorbian has /R/ and /R_j/ for the same letters. Czech has two {r}s, which > >appear to > >be complex to describe phonetically. Pre-Soviet Latvian has /r/ and /r_j/, > >but the > >Post-Soviet reinstatement of /r_j/ with it's own character {r-undercomma} > >is still up > >for debate. > > > >All these examples are from Daniels & Bright "The World's Writing Systems". > > Well, the book is incorrect at least on one thing: French *doesn't* > distinguish between a voiced uvular fricative and an alveolar trill. French > *doesn't* have an alveolar trill. Otherwise how would you explain that it > took me three months to master the Spanish alveolar trill?! What you have > in French is a single rhotic which is a voiced uvular fricative in almost > all accents, except a few which have an alveolar trill instead (in the > South of France). But there's no contrast between the two: they are the > same phoneme.
Similarly, all those German varieties are allophonic. 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

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Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>