rhotics (was Hellenish oddities)

YHL:

[snip]

>A friend suggested repeating [d] rapidly.  Occasionally it *almost*
>works.  <wry look>
Try placing the tounge rather relaxed in position for [t] and then force a
stream of air through.  This will produce a voiceless trill.  Once you
master that effortlessly you can add voice, then pronounce it before and
between vowels.  That's how my founetiks teacher thought those of us who
couldn't manage elegant r's, and I daresay he learnt it himself that way,
since his natural r was uvular.

>And no, I can't whistle properly.  I can't throat-sing either, despite
>trying those websites; I do seem to remember that one of them said it's
>harder for women to learn.  It's not fair.  <sigh>
Hmm.  IME it is harder for men than for women.  Maybe north Europeans are
different in this!?

[snip]

>Korean has some form of r that I *can* produce, which sounds kind of but
>not quite like a tap.  (The American approximant? also suffices,
>considering the number of Americans in and around Seoul.)  In
>syllable-final position the r manifests as an [l], I think.
According to the books Korean /r/ is a tap initially and intervocalicly, an
alveolar approximant(*) before consonants and [l] in final position.  One
of my books screws things up by transcribing the phoneme as /l/, since the
author believes that the Hangul {r} character was originally [l] in all
positions, while the ancient character looking like an uppercase Delta was
[r].  I guess his guess is as good as anybody's.

(*The American approximant is dorso-retroflex rather than apico-alveolar as
the Korean one.)

>My conlang has a single rhotic, and I figure that different "r" sounds are
>used by different dialects, but I haven't worked this out yet.
That, with or without positional or idiolectal variation between different
types is quite widespread in ethnic languages.  Witness English with some
three different approximants, tap in some positions in some British
speakers (plus tap as intervocalic /d/ for most Americans) and trill in
Scotland, or most other Germanic lgs with both apical and uvular r's in
individual/dialectal variation.

/ B.Philip Jonsson B^)>
--
mailto:bp.nospam@netg.se
mailto:bpjonsson.nospam@post.com (delete .nospam)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"If a language is a dialect with an army and a navy,
of what language, pray, is Basque a dialect?" (R.A.B.)