Re: The letter j\

From: "Raymond Brown" <ray.brown@...>
> >This one /j\/ isn't a voiced, palatal stop, but a voiced, palatal fricative.
>
> Yep, [j\] is the voiced equivalent of German ich-laut.  IME the Spanish /j/
> is often pronounced this way, at least by Spanish speakers from Spain (I
> don't know about Latin American varieties).  I'd be suprised if any
> language had /j\/ and /j/ as separate phonemes.
Well, I usually hear [j\] for consonantal /j/ (spelled <ll> and <y>), but not
vocalic /j/ (spelled <i> before another vowel).

So...some might have a minimal pair between <hiena> "hyena" and <llena> "full"
(first pair that comes in my dictionary).

> While /J\/ might be pretty stable in many languages, I think David is right
> in thinking that /j\/ isn't.
I like /j\/.  But I find that in NRC spoken Ibraan /C/ and voiced /C/ ends up as
[S] and [Z] anyway.

    *Muke!
--
http://www.frath.net/

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