Re: "H"'s (Was: Re: aquamarine demon (was <no subject>))

Hi. Could be because /x/ tends to prefer (in many languages) back vowels, as
it shares more features with them. See if /xa/ and /ha/ tend to lead you to
allophony as well.
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2001 4:58 PM
Subject: "H"'s (Was: Re: aquamarine demon (was <no subject>))


> On Thu, Nov 22, 2001 at 05:18:53PM +0100, Henrik Theiling wrote:
> [snip]
> > > ObConlang: Needless to say, none of my conlangs have a /h/. The sound
> > > spelt <h> is invariably a /x/.
> >
> > Really!  I find it quite nice to have phonemic /h/ and /?/.  Great
> > consonants!  Only to beat by pharyngeal and epiglottal ones! :-)
>
> Hmm, recently I've been noticing that the way I pronounce /x/ and /h/ are
> quite (too) similar. My conlang distinguishes between /x/, /h/ and /?/,
> but /xi/ and /hi/ sound a bit too alike to my ears. I was in fact thinking
> of making them allophonic :-P Maybe in a descendent lang they will merge.
> That should produce all kinds of interesting special cases (sorta like
> Attic Greek's _ei^mi_ and eimi'_ business, really confusing).
>
>
> T
>
> --
> "A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." -- P.
Erdos