Re: Chinese Dialect Question

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 10:39:23AM +0200, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> En réponse à H. S. Teoh :
>
>
> >Speaking of Portuguese... I find it rather annoying that _r_ is pronounced
> >[x]. And Spanish always confuses me with _y_ being [dZ] and _j_ being [j]
> >which is swapped from the English usage. As with using _h_ for [?].
>
> What kind of disfunctioning Spanish dialect are you referring to?! In
> Spanish 'y' is [j] or [dZ] depending on dialect (I've heard [Z] too, so
> there may be others) and 'j' is mainly [x] and sometimes a few other
> pronunciations (like [h]), but absolutely never [j]!!! And 'h' is silent
> (Spanish doesn't have the glottal stop, except maybe in interjections).
[snip]

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.


T

--
If it ain't broke, hit it again. -- Foon

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