Re: Hellenish oddities

Marcus Smith wrote:
>Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
>
>[snip lots of ranting]
>
>>It's fairly accurate, though
>>in the pronunciation guide it described Greek [k] as a normal 'k', but
>>[k^h] as "k-h (as in kit; emphatically pronounced)"; which annoyed the
>>nitpicker me, who hates pseudo-phonetic terms like "emphatic"
>>and "soft/hard", not to mention that there's no [k] in standard English,
>>just [k^h].
>
>English does indeed have [k]: every time /k/ is preceded by /s/ it is not
>aspirated, and it generally is not word finally either.
OK... here's the nitpicker in me too... 8)  I say [bi:kr=] for "beaker",
not [bi:k^hr=] with aspirated "k". So English has [k] in other places as
well. Its got something to do with ambisyllabicity that causes a loss of
aspiration after a stressed syllable.

-----<snip>-----
>>* what's with initial [ps] and [ts]? Even worse, initial [zd]!
>
>Apparently you've never looked at a "real" language. Just the other day I
>heard a Pima word [shm}:gam]. Note that [sh] is not [S], it is the sequence
>[s] plus [h]. Or there is the cluster in [SontSkwItS]. And what do you have
>to say about the Dakota word [xn]? These clusters in Greek are not that odd.
I saw an Austronesian language called Taba (a.k.a. Makian, spoken in
Indonesia's Maluku province with some pretty weird clusters: ['nmu] "muddy
water", ['mhonas] "sick", ['nhik] "bat", ['mtO] "eye", ['hkutan] "you ask"
vs ['kutan] "to ask", ['hhan] "you (pl) go".

-kristian- 8)