Re: CHAT: (no subject)

From: "Rob Nierse" <rnierse@...>

| | Danny Wier wrote:
| |
| | > By the way, what non-Klingon, non-Caucasian languages contain
| | > the consonant phoneme or phone /qX/ (or even /GR/)?
| |
| | Haha! I know that! That's got to be Dutch! :)
|
| In Quechua the Cuzco dialect also has the distinction between /q/, /qh/ and
/q'/. I just listened to a tape and I hear /qhawa/ 'see' as [qXhawa]

I forgot about Quechua, but I did think about Old Georgian which had /q/ and
/q'/ -- the former merged with /x/ (or is it /X/?). And Tigrinya has one
consonant with a value of something like /qX'/ or /X'/.

It is also my opinion that Proto-Semitic or Proto-Afro-Asiatic had *q' (> *q,
merging with *k'), *q(h) (> *h_) and *G (> *g^) as a three-way set. Some believe
that Proto-Indo-European had uvulars, but if at all, probably just *q and not
the expected complements *G and *Gh.

And again, it seems hard to pronounce /q/ (or more accurately /qh/) without
affrication.