Re: laterals (was: Pharingials, /l/ vs. /r/ in Southeast Asia)

Racsko Tamas scripsit:

>   But who says that English 'sy' in <Sue> 'syoo' and 'sh' in <shoe> 'shoo'
> can't both be an [S] for an Indonesian, or an [s] for a Finn [not for an
> Anglophone, of course]?
AFAIK with /sj/ all dialects have either dropped the palatalization (as
with "Sue" /su/) or have gone all the way to /S/, as with "issue" /ISu/).
Nobody says /sju/ or /Isju/ any more.

In the case of /rj/, palatalization has been lost everywhere:  "true" is
/tr\u/.

The case of /tj/, /dj/, /nj/, and I think /lj/ is interesting, as the
split is not lexical but dialectal: "tune" became /tun/ in North America,
stayed /tjun/, in conservative British speech, and moved to /tSun/
in advanced British dialects and Australian.  Similarly with d:dj:dZ
and n:nj:J.

--
Principles.  You can't say A is         John Cowan <jcowan@...>
made of B or vice versa.  All mass      http://www.reutershealth.com
is interaction.  --Richard Feynman      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

Replies