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Re: what is the difference?

From:R A Brown <ray@...>
Date:Saturday, November 26, 2005, 9:55
Tristan Mc Leay wrote:
[snip]
> > Still, I don't know how to produce a voiced glottal fricative, and I > don't know how it's different from a vowel. I do understand they're > quite common, though, particularly intervocalically (where I wouldn't > know how they're distinguished from hiatus).
They occur in some varieties of English in words like _behind_, _ahead_ etc. As for 'hiatus', it rather depends exactly what one means by the term. It is used to denote that two vowels sounds are kept and not run together as a diphthong. How that is realized in any particular language will, I think , vary. It may well be that a non-phonemic [h\] is used in some; I believe some languages use a non-phonemic glottal stop in such positions - that wouldn't do in English as we Brits would 'hear' it as an allophone of /t/ :) But, yes, the voiced glottal fricatives is not particularly uncommon among the world's languages. The /h/ of both Czech and Afrikaans, for example, is voiced, whether initial or intervocalic. -- Ray ================================== ray@carolandray.plus.com http://www.carolandray.plus.com ================================== MAKE POVERTY HISTORY