Re: OT: German reputation

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 08:09:41 +0100, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
wrote:

>On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 18:15:40 -0500, J. 'Mach' Wust
><j_mach_wust@...> wrote:
>>
>> It's one of the cases that clearly show the advantage of the new ß-rules:
>> In the old spelling, the pronunciation could be either /tSYs/ or /tSy:s/,
>> in the new spelling |tschüss| the only pronunciation unambiguously is
>> /tSYs/.
>
>*nods* And since I say /tSy:s/, I'd write it |tschüß| if I had to use
>one of the two alternatives. Though for me, it's nearly invariably
>|tschüs| -- which, incidentally, is the only spelling my Duden. (It
>marks the "ü" with a macron below, indicating pronunciation as [y:],
>but includes a parenthetical note that the pronunciation with [Y] also
>exists.)
I was so convinced that my pronunciation was the only one that I didn't even
consider other ones... I should have been more considerate! My Duden (1996)
has both spellings.

==================================

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:26:12 -0500, Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:

>J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
>(I wrote:)
>[Re "dios" >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].
>
>Pardon my impressionistic term. Actually there seem to be two ways:
>1. "extra short", with a breve, CSX _X, e.g. e_X
>2. "non-syllabic", with a subscript inverted breve, CSX _^ e.g. e_^
I think that [i_^] is the same as [j] (though [j] could as well be [I_^]).

I think that extra short unstressed [i_X] + vowel will be analyzed as [j] +
vowel by some and vice versa. Syllabification is very open to interpretation
in cases like this.

In the phrase _Dios mío_, I can imagina that secondary or terciary effects
of the stress pattern might de-stress the _o_ in _Dios_ (the main stress is
on _mío_), so that the _i_ might seem more prominent than usually.

gry@s:
j. 'mach' wust

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