Re: OT: German reputation

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 12:12:45 -0500, Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:

>Mark J. Reed (I think) wrote:
>> >... whereas I regularly hear native Spanish speakers say /a.di'os/
>> >as 3 syllables,
>
>Me too. At least, with a clear [i] (but barely syllabic) rather than [j].
>(Maybe too they're trying to sound "American"??)
I think the IPA doesn't allow a distinction between "barely" syllabic and
unsyllabic. An unsyllabic [i] is a [j].

>> >even though the rules for Spanish diphthongs  we were
>> >taught in school would make it /a'djos/ (or maybe /ad'jos/).
>
>Right. Certainly if it was ['di.os] there would be a written accent as in
>mío, tío etc. OTOH there's guión 'hyphen' which I think is clearly 2-syl
>[gi'(j)on].  Aside from the verb ending (preterit 3sing) -ió (which is
>always clearly ['jo] in my experience, this diphthong seems to be rather
>rare in Spanish.
In the old spelling, you could also find _Diós_ with acute, as well as e.g.
_fué_. I'm surprised that the current spelling allows both _guion_ and
_gión_. I think this acute is best explained as belonging to the morpheme
_-ón_, as in words like mansión, buscón, pelotón, etc. For the
pronunciation, it's not necessary.

g_0ry@s:
j. 'mach' wust

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