Re: Pronouncing Tokana (was RE: Importance of stress)
| From: | Herman Miller <hmiller@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, January 29, 2000, 4:16 |
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On Fri, 28 Jan 2000 16:53:40 +0100, Christophe Grandsire
<Christophe.Grandsire@...> wrote:
> I find it strange, because English has also voiced stops contrasting with
>voiceless stops, at least inside words, doesn't it? I think in France it
>would be the contrary: no problem to distinguish voicing, but tremendous
>problems to distinguish aspirated vs. unaspirated stops. So an English
>person listening to a French saying "cadeau" /kado/ would hear something
>like "gadeau" /gado/?
Possibly, in some contexts. When I took an articulatory phonetic class, [k]
was one of the hardest sounds to learn to distinguish and pronounce
correctly. I didn't have as much trouble with ejectives and clicks! But I
think "cadeau" would only sound like /gado/ in isolation; in a context like
"un cadeau", the lack of voicing would give it away.
In a language like Chinese, [k] really does sound like a "g", since it is
contrasted with [kh]. The Korean "kk" also sounds to me a little like a "g"
at the beginning of a word, but "k" in the middle. Korean "k", on the other
hand, sounds like "k" initially and "g" medially! I think what's happening
is that the glottal tension in "kk", an unfamiliar sound to English
speakers, is confused with voicing. Perhaps there is also some slight
aspiration in "k", but it does contrast with the strongly aspirated "kh".
--
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