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

> Date: Sat, 4 Oct 2003 15:10:13 -0400
> From: Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>
>
> 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.
It's alveolar, but in onsets it's a fricative just like English /D/;
the best notation is [D_-] (with the diacritic for retracted), since
the IPA seems to believe that all alveolar fricatives are sibilants.

The last time this was discussed on the list, someone noted that the
same phoneme exists in an American Indian language --- Shoshoni?

In coda position the Danish /D/ does get shortened and assume much of
the character of a glide (second element of falling diphthong) ---
like in r

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