Re: OT: Afrikaans

Hi!

Thomas Leigh <thomas@...> writes:
...
> > >  whereas in Afrikaans both
> > >elements are fully rounded, /2y/ or something close.
>
> > That's how Dutch pronounces "eu".
>
> Ah, you have comfirmed my suspicion! Textbooks of Dutch always
> say that [eu] is /2/, a pure vowel, but it always sounded
> diphthongised to me. I was never sure if I was "hearing things",
> or if I heard it right and the textbooks were wrong (or
> hypercorrecting).
I thought that was the same hypercorrect thing as in /e:/ which, as I
just posted, always sounded like [e:I] or [eI] or [e(I)] to me.
Definitely diphthongised, too.  And /2:/ always sounded like [2:Y] to
me.  I write the first part long because I don't feel the two parts
are evenly long.

> Odd. All I can say is that that goes against what every textbook
> and dictionary of Afrikaans I've seen says. They all say that
> Afrikaans [g] is identical in pronunciation to [ch], both being
> pronounced /x/. /g/ does exist, written [gh], but is restricted
> to a few loanwords, such as "gholf".
This would explain the spelling {lig} for 'light', which is {licht} and
/lIxt/ in Dutch.  I would be surprised if that was /lIg/ in Africaans
instead of /lIx/.

> And drat it, I just realised I've been using [] for written
> notation, when it's something else I've forgotten; [] is
> supposed to be for phonetic representation, right?
Exactly. :-) And // for phonemic.

**Henrik

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