Re: Pronouncing Tokana (was RE: Importance of stress)

I wrote:

>> "Tokana" is pronounced with
>> stress on the penultimate syllable.  The /t/ and /k/ are both unaspirated,
>> and thus often sound voiced to an English speaker's ear (e.g. my boyfriend
>> imitates my pronunciation by calling it "Dogana").  As for the vowels,
>> the /o/ is a short back rounded lax mid-vowel, similar to the "au" in
>> "caught" (for those speakers who distinguish "caught" from "cot"), or
>> else like the "o" in "sort".  The /a/ is as in "father".  There is
>> no appreciable difference in length or quality between the stressed
>> /a/ in the second syllable and the unstressed /a/ in the final syllable.
And Paul Bennett replied:

>Okeydokey, that means I'll now pronounce it:
>
>/t_dQ<M>"kA<ML>.nA<L>/
>
>Which is a heck of a lot easier to read, don't you think!  I automatically
>give it a fairly dental (/_d/) "t", ISTR something about this from your
>webpage?
>
>If not, then that's the way it feels most natural to me.  The /n/ is backed
>from dental to alveolar thanks to the preceeding /k/.  Heck, don't ask me
>why, it's almost entirely instinctival...
I suppose I would pronounce it as follows:

/tQ<M>"kA<H>.nA<L>/

Tokana "t" is actually pretty alveolar.  Some speakers even retract
it in certain contexts, giving an almost retroflex articulation - probably
to maximise the phonetic contrast between "t" (the apico-alveolar stop)
and "th" (the lamino-dental stop).

Also, stress in Tokana seems to manifest itself phonetically as high
tone, which drops to a low tone on the following vowel.  (If the stress
falls on a diphthong, then that diphthong is associated with a sharply
falling contour tone.)

Barring those quibbles, your pronunciation is dead on.

Matt.