Re: YAPT: Dutch ij and ui

Carsten Becker wrote:

> Hello!
>
> My parents decided the day before yesterday's noon

'The day before yesterday's noon' is the same day as the day before
yesterday at 10 pee em. Do you mean something significant by that phrase?

> to visit the
> Netherlands the other day. When reading the road signs, we weren't sure

You know how confused you made me here? When I finally worked out that
you meant you not only decided to visit another country, but *you did
it* within a few days, perhaps even hours, I decided that I have to hate
you. I can't visit another country without getting on a plane or boat
(or swimming). In future, I expect you to have a considerable body of
water between you and the nearest country. (Note to Brits: The English
Channel is not 'a considerable body of water', and even if it were,
Britain's too small to count as a country.) Well, hahahaha, one day the
European Union will be a country just like the United States of America
or the Commonwealth of Australia (except that it'll still be close to
Asia and Africa...).

(Though with a bit of luck I intend to go to Europe during the
christmas/summer holidays next year.)

> how to pronounce <ij>, <u> and <ui>. My father always said [i:] or [Ei)]
> for <ij>, [y] for <u> and <ui> I don't remember anymore. I always
> thougth that <ij> would be [Ai)] (IJsselmeer is here usually pronounced
> ["Ai)sl=me:6]) and <ui> would be either [Oi)] or even [9i)]. <g> is
> always [x] or [X]. And <sch> is [sx], because it's ["Ens.xId@] AFAIK
> (Enschede, German ["EnS@d@]). At least in the news they always said it
> that way when there was a big bomb explosion (or was it a train crash?)
> in Enschede some years ago.

AFAIK, ij is anywhere between [Ei] and [Ai] depending on dialect. <u> is
[y]. [ui] is something like [2i] or [2y], but my mother and grandmother
refuse to ever provide an example of it on the grounds that it's
unpronounceable. <g> is [G] in some more conservative dialects (like my
grandmother's). A speaker of this list's official language will probably
be able to help better.

> BTW, it was a nice sunny (and very warm) day. We visited the historical
> centres of Gouda and Leiden and had a quick look at the shore promenade
> of Scheweningen, but there were too many people and it was too hot and
> everything was far too expensive. My legs hurt when we were at home
> again, and I was quite tired. Nevertheless, it was a nice day and I
> could get a glimpse at (of?) the Netherlands.

of

--
| Tristan.               |       To be nobody-but-yourself in a world
| kesuari@yahoo!.com.au  |  which is doing its best to, night and day,
|                        |                 to make you everybody else---
|                        |          means to fight the hardest battle
|                        |            which any human being can fight;
|                        |                    and never stop fighting.
|                        |      --- E. E. Cummings, "A Miscellany"
|                        |
|                        |     In the fight between you and the world,
|                        |                             back the world.
|                        |      --- Franz Kafka,
|                        |         "RS's 1974 Expectation of Days"

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