Quoting John Cowan <cowan@...>:
> Tristan McLeay scripsit:
>
> > > I don't think it has anything to do with orthography. Partly because /S/
> > > and /Z/ do not exist in Dutch as phonemes, our pronunciation of <s> and
> <z>
> > > sometimes comes dangerously close, especially in city dialects.
> >
> > Oh, okay, could be that then.
>
> Not surprising. Finnish and Bengali both have only /s/, but regularly
> pronounce it [S]. In Bengali, at least, the close relatives use [s].
Are you saying that [S] is the normal pronunciation of /s/ in Finnish? That
does not agree with the not inconsiderable amount of Finnish I've heard over
the years ...
Andreas