German affricates (was: affricates/grammar help/intransitivity/free word order)

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 22:10:44 +0100, Steven Williams <feurieaux@...> wrote:

>> >and German dialects have an affricate usually
>> > analyzed as [kx], but which could also be
>> > described as [qX]. For what I know, both are very
>> > unusual sounds, that is, there are very few
>> > natlangs that feature them.
>>
>> Haven't ever heard it in any dialects I've
>> witnessed... must be really rare then.
>
>It's pretty common in Swiss, IIRC, and is the source
>of a great deal of humor from the speakers of other
>dialects that didn't undergo the second German sound
>shift that gave the Swiss such monstrosities as their
>pronunciation of 'Besteck' as [b@."StEqX] or something
>like that.
Acutally, it's [pSteqX], without schwa (and the quality of the short /e/
varies from dialect to dialect. :)

The High-Alemannic dialects and the South-Tirolean dialects are the only
German dialects that have completed the second German sound shift, that is,
they've not only shifted t and p to ss/ts and ff/pf, but also k to xx/kx
(which standard German has only partly shifted, as Jörg Rhiemeier has
pointed out).

====================

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 22:33:57 +0100, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
wrote:

>> >German has the labiodental affricate [pf]
>>
>> Yes, but only in the middle of the word or at the end. Word-initial
>> it is "f".
>
>In some dialects, yes; but not in standard German.
Standard German pronunciation varies geographically, even though this is
still not widely acknowledged. In the north, there are many regions where
standard German words such as /pfan@, pfaU/ are pronounced as [fan@, faU]
(e.g. Pascal Kramm or Philip Newton).

These different standard German pronunciations should be distinguished from
the traditional local dialect of German. In the north, for instance, the
local dialects aren't affected by the German soundshift at all and have an
initial /p/ as in English (pan, pea[cock]), whereas the local pronunciations
of standard German may have [f].

There is a standard German pronunciation that is considered more standard
than the others. It's the pronunciation teached abroad, heard in the least
regionally coloured actor or newsspeaker pronunciations, and outlined in the
pronunciation Duden. It's a prescriptive standard, and it's losing
importance, though I guess it's still widely recognized. In that specific
variety (and in many other pronunciations of standard German), it's
definitly [pfan@, pfaU]

===========================

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 08:29:39 +0100, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
wrote:

>> Incidentally, what's with the extreme poverty of
>> initial [x] in standard German? The only word I can
>> think of is 'Chaos', which can either be [xa.os] or
>> [ka.os], the latter pronunciation seeming to be the
>> more common.
>
>TTBOMK, [k] is the only "correct" pronunciation in Standard German. I
>believe that Swiss German has word-initial [x], though. (OTOH,
>"Chemie" and "China" have [C] by standard German standards, though
>some pronounce them with [k] -- and others with [S].)
>
>I think "Chuzpe" (chutzpah) has [x], but that's a loanword.
I thought the prescriptive standard varied between /k/ before back vowels
(and /a/) and /C/ before front vowels, with /x/ in a few loans.

As pointed out, the standard German pronunciation of initial _ch_ varies a
lot from region to region. In Swiss standard German, some use /x/ all the
time, while others use it only before back vowels (and /a/), using /k/ in
other cases, and again others use /k/ all the time. I think that the /S/
pronuniciation is an allophone of the /C/ pronunciation in the regions where
all /C/ are replaced by /S/ (in the Rhine-Main area and in Saxony?).

gry@s:
j. 'mach' wust

Replies