Re: /x/ and 'inter-Germanic' (was: Intergermansk)

On Saturday, January 29, 2005, at 07:13 , Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:
>
>> It is quite clear from Philip's mail that Swedish does not have /x/; it
>> is
>> just that some varieties of Swedish have [x] as a realization of the
>> phoneme /S/, while in other Swedish speaking areas it is realized as [s`
>> ]
>> or [s\].
>
> I don't see how that's clear at all. How do we determine that a phoneme
> that the
> majority pronounces as [x] is, in fact, /S/? Especially when those who
> don't
> mostly use [s`] or [s\] rather than [S]?
I really do not want to get into an argument about at what stage during a
sound change, you change from using one phonemic symbol to another. But I
think I may be excused in view of:

On Friday, January 28, 2005, at 07:51 , Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> Ray Brown wrote:
>
>> I had not realized, I admit, that /S/ in modern Swedish was now
>> (generally/
>> always?) pronounced [x].
[snip]
> It has been spreading northward from southernmost Sweden for more
> than a century -- apparently reaching the Stockholm area after the
> WW2 period, but it has not yet reached the northern half of Sweden,
> where we instead find merger of earlier /S/ and /rs/, nor has it
> reached the Swedish-speaking parts of Finland where /S/ actually
> is realized [s\] -- the actual pronunciation of traditional "/C/"
> on the mainland --, while "/C/" is [ts\] and /rs/ is still [rs].
>
> One often cited reason for the spread of [x] is the "need" to
Not only did Philip not correct my use of /S/, he also used it himself. In
his mail [x], [s`] and [s\] are shown as _phonetic_ symbols. Philip is
Swedish-speaking, I am not.

Also you yourself have written:
On Wednesday, January 26, 2005, at 08:38 , Andreas Johansson wrote:
[snip]
> I'll take exception to that - [x] is all over my Swedish, and over that
> of a
> great many other Swedes. That the phoneme in question is traditionally
> denoted
> /S/ should not be allowed to influence our judgement as to whether it's
> "the
> same" as the /x/ of German or Afrikaans.
and:
> On Thursday, January 27, 2005, at 08:52 , Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:
[snip]
>> I had not realized, I admit, that /S/ in modern Swedish was now
>> (generally/
>> always?) pronounced [x].
>
> Other pronunciations are found, including reportedly [S], but I think it'
> s fair
> to say [x] is the standard one. It's often more-or-less rounded,
> especially
> before rounded vowels, and sometimes it's weakened to [M\_0] (that's a vl
> velar
> approximant) - I seem to recall Daniel Andreasson saying he's got that
> pronunciation.
I'm sorry, but my use of /S/ has not been 'corrected' before; it was used
by Philip and you yourself referred to a phoneme "traditionally denoted /S/
". In all the quotes above [x] is shown as a _phone_.

I have only your & Philip's descriptions to go on. If I have drawn the
wrong conclusions, I am sorry - but in view of the evidence presented to
me, I do not think my conclusion was unreasonable.

[Back to Andreas' email of Jan. 29th}
> (Yes, I've got something personal against denoting this phoneme as /S/.)
That was not clear before.  I think I may have inadvertently stepped into
an area of inter-Swede disagreement - if so, I want no part part in it.

> Now, this is of limited interest to a project like Folkspraak, since the
> phoneme
> doesn't have much of anything to do with the German /x/, but that's
> another
> matter.
Too true. Also it does not, as far as I can see, invalidate my basic
thesis that because the Folkspraak Charter says:
"The primary design principle is that Folkspraak omit any linguistic
feature not common to most of the modern
Germanic languages."
..then it will omit /x/ (as well as /T/ and /D/.

Basically, my error has been to lump the Swedes in with Norwegians and
Danes as "continental Scandinavians" - ME CVLPA.
===============================================

On Saturday, January 29, 2005, at 08:19 , Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
[snip]
> Sure.  If *I* (absit omen) were to design an intergermanic conlang
> I would start from the common North-West Germanic sound system, before
> umlaut, palatalization and the High German sound shift, but merge */T/
> into /t/ and /d/ and allow [v] as a realization of /w/ and [ju] as
> a realization of /iu/eu/.
That seems reasonable   :)
===============================================

On Saturday, January 29, 2005, at 10:15 , Isaac Penzev wrote:

> Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>
>> Sure.  If *I* (absit omen) were to design an intergermanic conlang
>
> Guys. That all is very interesting. You may succeed in provoking me to
> start
> such a project...
I know the feeling. The Tutonish extract was like by some, and others have
liked Intergermansk. A pity there is AFAIK no continuous text in
Folkspraak. But it is interesting seeing the quite different approaches of
these three. It does sort of make one feel: "I wonder what I would make of
it"     :)

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

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