Rhotics (was: Chinese Dialect Question)
| From: | Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, October 2, 2003, 18:35 |
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On Wednesday, October 1, 2003, at 07:40 , JS Bangs wrote:
[snip]
> trills and some approximants. Rhotics are perceptually alike, so an
> English speaker saying [r`] and a German speaker saying [R] recognize that
> they're both making "r sounds", despite the fact that they're articulatory
> very dissimilar.
And, indeed, many languages have variation among the speakers of the same
language. The most common German pronunciation is now [R] but apically
trilled [r] is also found (it probably lost popularity in the latter half
of the 20th cent.
because Hitler used the trilled [r]).
Modern French speakers commonly use the Parisian approximant [R], but I
have certainly heard both the uvular trilled [R\] and apically trilled [r]
, the latter
being a mark rural, southern speakers.
Welsh /r/ is always trilled; the most common pronunciation is the apical
trill,
but in parts of the north the uvular trill is used.
As for English as spoken in Britain, one meets quite a variety of local
variants.
> Furthermore, most languages have exactly one rhotic, so
> the use of Latin {r} to represent whichever rhotic a language has is
> indeed a point of consistency.
I agree.
Ray
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