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

>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.
I didn't think that there was any really good IPA symbol for it.  Danish
spiriantized /d/ is anything but sibilant.  Is it pronounced with the blade
of the tongue rather than the tip?  (I ask because that is the way that I
found to imitate the sound credibly.  Pronouncing /d/ and /t/ with the
laminally rather than apically got me a credible versions of the sounds in
videnskab, mad, and Turkiet.)

>The last time this was discussed on the list, someone noted that the
>same phoneme exists in an American Indian language --- Shoshoni?
That's interesting to hear.  I happen to like the sound a lot.  I just
whish that there were a decent transcription for it.

> > Videnskab works, but I think that the phone is a [B] and not truly a [w].
>
>Did you stay in Jutland? The standard language has a stop here.
>Unreleased, unvoiced, but most definitely a stop.
No, I was in Roskilde, Glostrup, Charlottenlund, and a couple of other
places around Copenhagen, including a house out on Amager about 3k from the
airport.  And apparently I definately did not sound Jysk when I lived in
those places.  (I got laughed at once for sounding too Københavnsk.)  But
that was 13 years ago, and my accent has deteriorated with disuse.  And
you're right, if I pronounce it unvoiced and unreleased, it feels more natural.

> > 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.
>
>More likely because it's a relative recent loan... like after 1500 CE
>or so. Try peber [p_hewQ], kobber [k_hOwQ] for examples.
Peber definitely does what you say, and so does kobber.  It's not quite the
[w] that I'm used to in my own language, but it's a lot closer to that than
it is to a [b], and it's probably not quite tight enough to call it a [B].

>Some verbs show lenition in less careful speech: løbe [l2:u ~ "l2:b@]
>(to run), løb [l2u ~ l2?b], løber ["l2u?Q ~ "l2?bQ], where homographic
>nouns ["l2:b@] (rennet), [l2:?b] (race), ["l2:bQ] (runner) do not.
I just pronounced løbe and was really surprised to hear how close it
sounded to lyve.  (Not that I couln't tell the difference, but I just
hadn't expected them to sound that similar.)

> > (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.)
>
>Not in recent loans, I don't think.
I had never noticed that the loan words did not exhibit the same
phonological behavior as the native ones.  That's fascinating.  Isn't
marmalade a loan word, though?  It's got that caracteristic spirantized /d/
allophone.  (In fact, marmalade is my favorite word to use as an example of
that particular /d/ allophone.)

Isidora

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