Re: Chinese Dialect Question

Isidora Zamora wrote:

> At 04:16 PM 10/4/03 -0400, you wrote:
>
>> Isidora Zamora scripsit:
>>
>> > Which potato?  The one's that Danes invariably keep in their mouths
>> when
>> > speaking :-)
>>
>> That would be the one.  When I (mis)translated "Copenhagen" as
>> "Cheapinghaven", Lars Mathiesen corrected it to "Cheapmanhaven"; I
>> apologized that I hadn't been able to hear the "mann" morpheme through
>> the potato.
>
>
> ROTFLOL.  That's wonderful!  Although it's a bit odd, because I've
> lived in
> the area, and the place is anything but cheap to live in :-)
>
> Until your ear becomes accustomed to it, it can be difficult to hear
> *anything* through the potato, and I couldn't hear the "mand" morpheme
> until the origin of the name was explained to me.
>
> Then there's the problem of acquiring your very own potato and learing to
> speak around it.  I knew from the start that someone was eventually going
> to ask me to say "rød grød med fløde," which is a very mushy mouthful for
> foreigners, (as well as being a very delicious desert), so I got my
> host-brother to coach me on pronunciation.  By the time school started, I
> could do a fair  job of it, and it paid off.  The first time someone
> asked
> me to say it, I shot back with the phrase, and the boy who had asked
> me was
> rather embarrased.
>
>> > Can you explain the "over-voiced" and "over-fortis" business to me?  I
>> > learned Danish before I was a lingust.
>>
>> In other words, pronouncing [b_0] as [b] is more voicing than is wanted,
>> but doesn't collide with any other phoneme.  Similarly, pronouncing
>> [t_0_h] is more fortis than it should be.
>
>
> How is [t_0_h] more fortis than it should be?  As far as I have been able
> to observe, Danish voiceless stops are supposed to be quite heavily
> aspiriated.  (It's also quite possible that I don't properly
> understand the
> meaning of the term "fortis.")
>
> Isidora
>
Ok, please excuse my extreme ignorance, but what does fortis mean? Also,
what does a voiceless stop sound like? And, lastly, what do you mean by
potato? I'm really sorry if my questions seem silly, but I've never had
a class on linguistics (they don't seem to be interested in offering
linguistics classes in my high school :-( ).

--
Jonathan Beagley

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