Re: [x] in English?

Daniel Andreasson:

>Hi y'all.
Hi to you!  You must be from southern Sweden.  ;)

>I've been watching a BBC production called
>"The Childrens' Hospital" or "Alder Hey" or
>something. Some people there (I've heard at least
>three people use it) use a voiceless
>velar fricative [x] instead of the stop [k] in
>word final positions.
>One example is the word 'back' which is pronounced
>[b&x]. What's that? Is it some Gaelic influence
>on northern English dialects or what? Although it
>sounds pretty cool IMO.
I've never heard that myself, but I am in Texas.  We do have very strange=
=20
pronunciations, but no [x] anywheres I know.  (I discovered this morning=20
that I do pronounce 'd, l, n, s, t, z' after 'r' as retroflexes, and if I=
'm=20
not mistaken Swedish and Norwegian do in some regions...)

Anyway, I reckon that would be a very localized Scots pronunciation (Scot=
s=20
English of course has phonemic /x/ and not just in 'loch' either), or may=
be=20
not.  That is, incidentally, one of the stop-to-fricative shifts that tak=
es=20
place in High German dialects which do not occur in Low German.  (Example=
s:=20
_ich_ 'I' vs. _ik_, _dorf_ 'town' vs. _dorf_, _fu=DF_ 'foot' vs. _fut_.)

Or it could be Celtic influence, since of course you have /k/ to /x/=20
lenition/spirantization in all Celtic languages.

But you got me curious, I outta check this out...  DW

>Daniel
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