Re: Aspirated stops vs. fricatives (was Re: Tit'xka (Pretty Long Post))

At 17:08 on 29.12.1998, Eric Christopherson wrote:

> Sheets, Jeff wrote:
> > Okay.  I mean /x/.  I also am not familiar with any difference between your
> > /k_h/ and /k/.  If they are allophones in English, I'm incapable of hearing
> > the difference.  E.G. I see no difference between the k in kill and ck in
> > pack.
>
> Aspiration is simply a puff of air after a sound. Usually in English,
> unvoiced stops are aspirated except when they come after /s/; thus
> "speak" is [spik], whereas "peak" is [p_hik]. It's hard at first to
> hear the difference, but you can feel the puff of air by putting your
> hand in front of your mouth while saying the words. You can feel air
> hitting it when you say "peak" but not "speak."
I saw a textbook of Swedish for Finnish speakers that recommended
practicing Swedish pronunciation with a candle in front of ones mouth,
making sure that the flame waved when pronouncing aspirated unvoiced stops.
Of course this works the other way around to, which I used succesfully
when learning Tibetan.

>
> In French, Spanish, and Italian, among other languages, stops are
> never aspirated. In languages descended from Sanskrit, among others,
> the difference between aspirated and unaspirated stops is phonemic;
> the meaning of a word depends on it.
To me all non-geminate Italian stops sounded like voiced, especially
intervocalically (e.g. "molto prattigo") I wonder if it was due to lack of
aspiration, or if they are _actually_ voiced in modern Tuscan and Roman
speech.  Any Italian left on this list?

/BP


    B.Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
    ----------------------------------------------------

        Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                            (Tacitus)