Re: Chinese Dialect Question

At 12:51 PM 10/3/03 +0200, you wrote:
>At 08:16 1.10.2003, JS Bangs wrote:
>
>>p, t, k, b, d, g are usually equal to their phonetic values, or differ
>>only non-distinctively.
>
>Ever heard about Danish?  Basically _b, d, g_ are [b_0, d_0, g_0] while
>_p, t, k_ are [b_0_h, d_0_h, g_0_h] (really ugly transcription there),
>but after vowels and semivowels _b, d, g_ become _w, D, w/j_ and
>_p, t, k_ become [b_0, d_0, g_0].
I could just swear that /d/ doesn't become a real [D].  It sounds an
*awful* lot like one, but I don't think that it's truly interdental; I have
this theory that it's laminal, but you may know better than I do.  (I just
know that I created a credible version of it with a laminal
approximate.)  And /d/ and /t/ do something even weirder when caught
between a vowel and the end of a word.  The first many times that a
foreigner hears it, it sounds for all the world like some mutant variety of
[l].

I had never realized that all the stops are without voice in Danish (except
in the environments you mention), but I had noticed long ago that Danish
voiceless stops are aspirated even more strongly than English ones.  (I can
now produce an aspirated glottal stop with ease and can even aspirate
certain word-final vowels.)

I'm trying to think of a word with a post-vocalic /b/ so that I can hear
what you wrote about it becoming [w].  (OTOH, I am quite familiar with the
slightly bizarre phenomenon of Danish /g/ --> [w] or [j].  It's astonishing
that that consonant can turn into either of the glides, but it most
certainly does.  The other astonishing thing is that I seem to be able to
predict which it is going to do and not embarass myself by mispronouncing
words with /g/ in them.)

Isidora

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