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Re: Phonetics vs. Phonemics (was: apparently bizarre 'A's)

From:Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Date:Thursday, February 23, 2006, 15:08
On 2/23/06, John Vertical <johnvertical@...> wrote:
> That reminds me - what's the most different allophones of a single phoneme > you know of (either qualitively or quantitively)?
The most different-seeming to me are [h] and [f] for Japanese /h/, but those aren't all that far apart really.
> (I think it's been suggested that English /h/ and /N/ would be the same > phoneme, but that's a little too far IMO.)
I'm pretty sure that suggestion has never been made seriously. It's just an observation that /N/ never occurs initially and /h/ never finally in English, so they're allegedly in complementary distribution. (Which makes it hard for us native English speakers to pronounce those sounds in those positions - I personally have no trouble with initial /N/, but final /h/ still eludes me; it always tries to turn into /x/.) Sorry about the TOFU in my last post, btw. Failed to uncheck the checkbox. -- Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

Replies

Joe <joe@...>Phonetics vs. Phonemics
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>