Re: Borrowing a word

Isidora Zamora dagizhe:

> At 06:03 PM 8/21/03 +0300, you wrote:
> >Andreas Johansson dagizhe:
> >
> > > Reminds me; how can a labiodental fricative possibly be labialized?
> >
> >In Russian *all* consonants are strongly labialized before /u/, so one can
> >compare initial sounds in _fára_ ["far@] 'headlight' and _fúga_ ["fug@]
> >'fugue'.
> >The latter definitely has smth like [f_w]. Surely, the difference is not
> >phonemic...
>
> But in Margi (spoken in West Africa), the labialization is phonemic, and
> "Margi has a full suite of labialized labials," including f_w and v_w,
> according to _Phonology in Generative Grammar_, by Michael Kenstowicz, p. 41.
I merely mean that the opposition is not phonemic in *Russian*. But since the
opposition *does* exist and is easily heard and reproduced, why cannot it exist
somewhere as *phonemic* one?

Side note: my latest project bears a provisional name "Magri". Is there
something in the air? :)

> Isidora
~~~~~~Yitzik~~~~~~