Re: Chinese Dialect Question

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 4:43 PM
Subject: Re: Chinese Dialect Question


> On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 08:49:33AM -0400, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> > OK, I don't actually know Spanish, so this is just (possibly baseless)
> > extrapolation from observing Spanish speakers amongst my acquaintances.
> > Pronouncing _j_ as [j] could be confusion over the English usage
> > (inadvertently swapping the English _j_ and _y_ because one is used to
_y_
> > being [dZ]). Mind you, this is from Central American Spanish speakers,
so
> > I'm not surprised it's wildly divergent from European Spanish.
>
> There are plenty of differences between European and American
> Spanish dialects, but in none of them is <j> pronounced as [j].
> In Spanish, <j>  is /x/.  It may come out as [h] or as something
> between [x] and [S] (like German whichever-ch-laut-isn't /x/), but
> never [j].
That's [C].  A palatal fricative, I believe.

> The primary differences in American Spanish are the replacement of
> /T/ and /l_j/ with /s/ and /j/, respectively.  Also, /j/ (whether
> spelled <ll> or <y>) tends to turn into a fricative [Z] or even an
> affricate [dZ)].  And the intervocalic fricativization of some of the
> voiced stops isn't quite as regular as it is in Castilian;
> /b/ and /d/ do almost alwas become [B] and [D] intervocalically, but
> sometimes /g/ stubbornly remains [g] instead of becoming [G] the
> way it ought to. :)
Something odd.  I've noticed my Spanish teacher pronounce initial /t/ as
[T].  The Spanish she speaks, I believe, is Chilean.  Anything know about
this?

> -Mark
>

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