Re: Danish, English _g_ shifts (was Chinese Dialect Question)

At 09:49 PM 10/4/03 +0400, Pavel wrote:
>Hello,
>
>Isidora, on Danish:
> > I could just swear that /d/ doesn't become a real [D].  It sounds an
> > *awful* lot like one, but I don't think that it's truly
> > interdental;[...]
>
>The overview of Danish that I have on hand claims it's a 'vocoid', which
>seems to say it's an approximant.
Well, I certainly have always pronounced it as an approximate.  It's a
lovely and bizarre sound.  I can't imagine that very many languages have
that precise phone.

> > I'm trying to think of a word with a post-vocalic /b/ so that
> > I can hear what you wrote about it becoming [w].
>
>Videnskab. Debat.
Nå, tak skal du ha', Pavel!  I just had a mental block.  Thanks for the
examples.

Videnskab works, but I think that the phone is a [B] and not truly a [w].

Debat doesn't work.  When I pronounce it, the /b/ remains very much a
[b].  I strongly suspect that this is because it is in the syllable
onset.  (If it were a /d/ OTOH, it would most definately turn into a
'vocoid', approximate, or whatever-it-is in that environmant, syllable
onset or no.)

> > (OTOH, I am quite familiar with the
> > slightly bizarre phenomenon of Danish /g/ --> [w] or [j].
> > It's astonishing
> > that that consonant can turn into either of the glides, but it most
> > certainly does.
>
>English did that as well, of course - g > [G_j] >  j / _V [+front] - so
>_eage_ > _eye_, Swedish _öga_, *_gard_ > _geard_ > _yard_, Sw. _gård_.
>Also, g > [G] > w / V_V [- front], so English _own_, Sw. _egen_ (don't
>remember the Old English).
I always forget that English has historically done some radical things with
its /g/'s because it isn't reflected in the modern spelling, and I don't
know Anglo-Saxon.  (The latter problem is one that I should really get
around to correcting one of these days, but I probably need to teach my
children Russian, Church Slavonic, and Latin, and perhaps Greek, before we
can divert our attention to Old English, so it isn' t likely to happen this
decade.)

Isidora

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