Re: Hellenish oddities

On Tue, Nov 21, 2000 at 06:59:31PM -0800, 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.
I've noticed something interesting (and to me, annoying) lately: A lot of
people pronounce <Wisconsin> as [wIs.k_hans@n], with what sounds like a
short pause between the first two syllables. My theory is that only people
from outside of Wisconsin pronounce it that way, but I haven't done any real
observation to prove this. Regardless, I find it odd that the /k/ is
aspirated...

> >* 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 [xná]? These clusters in Greek are not that odd.
I love those! :)

> >* Those initials are nothing compared to the [p^ht^h], or later [fT], in
> >words like 'phthong'. That word has in fact become a fashion word among me
> >and my linguistic friends, for being the most ridiculous syllable we know
> >of (though with heavy competition from Icelandic [vErmstl^0]).
I think phi-theta would actually be pronounced [pt_h] since it's so hard to
pronounce both with aspiration, but I could be wrong.

Is <phthong> pronounced with [fT] in English? I would think it'd just be [T]
(but I'd probably say [fT] just to be different).

> >* orthographic initials <mp> <nt> <gk> pronounced [b d g]...I haven't seen
> >any initial [mp]'s or such in my book of Ancient Greek, so I'm presuming
> >the nasals are just a spelling trick; the sample words given were all loan-
> >words, so I thought voiced stops could be an import to accommodate the new
> >words. Or just old voiced stops preserved by some environmental factor; I
> >don't know why, but in any case Modern Greek does seem to have two rows of
> >stops after all. Experts here will tell me the answer.
> >* chaotic stress pattern remains; perhaps I just fail to see the pattern in
> >it.
I think the words with initial nasal+stop are all loans, but I know that
intervocalically they're pronounced [mb], [nd], [Ng], as in [olimbos].

Also, Elliott Lash wrote:
>  Two examples of the "ft" at the beginning are
> "ftero" "feather" and "ftano" "I arrive"
Do those have [ft] in modern Greek? I thought they were still [pt].

--
Eric Christopherson / *Aiworegs Ghristobhorosyo