Re: rhotics (was Hellenish oddities)

H. S. Teoh wrote:

>OTOH, even after you have learnt to identify the
>sound, doesn't mean you can produce it.
This is certainly true. I hear Chickasaw and Pima in phonemics.  That is,
when I'm transcribing my consultants' speech, I generally do not hear the
allophonic alternations anymore. (One big exception for Pima is that I
still separate [l] and [r], which are allophonic variants of each other.)
However, I cannot pronounce either language very well. I have a hard time
with the Chickasaw lateral fricative when it is next to another consonant.
For Pima, I have a hard time making my intervocalic /l/'s retroflex, I use
a palatal fricative instead of the retroflex fricative, and I never do get
the high central vowel right. (I learned the word for "having sex" [DoTma]
by mispronouncing "Who ran?" [DoTm}]) I won't even talk about how often I
drop out the glottal stop.

Marcus