Re: Chinese Dialect Question

Mark J. Reed sikyal:

> On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 11:16:00PM -0700, JS Bangs wrote:
> > Oh, there's more consistency than you think. Consider:
>
> [snip]
> >  r is almost always a rhotic.
>
> Not to take away from your excellent points about common
> letter values, but saying "r is almost always a rhotic"
> is rather tautological, since the class of "rhotics"
> is pretty much defined as "the set of sounds represented by
> the letter <r> in languages using the Roman alphabet".  :)
> Phonetically, those sounds belong to a family-resemblance
> category with a variety of commonalities, but the only
> real universal is the use of <r> in writing.
There's a little more than that. "Rhotics" are a class of sounds
acoustically defined by having a lowered third formant, and includes most
trills and some approximants. Rhotics are perceptually alike, so an
English speaker saying [r`] and a German speaker saying [R] recognize that
they're both making "r sounds", despite the fact that they're articulatory
very dissimilar. Furthermore, most languages have exactly one rhotic, so
the use of Latin {r} to represent whichever rhotic a language has is
indeed a point of consistency.


--
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/blog

Jesus asked them, "Who do you say that I am?"

And they answered, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground
of our being, the kerygma in which we find the ultimate meaning of our
interpersonal relationship."

And Jesus said, "What?"

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