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

Tristan McLeay eskribiw:

<<Well, I do speak a language that has a native /&/ phoneme. If I
couldn't
tell the difference between [&] and [a], I wouldn't be able to laugh
at
Dougy (just a random character) for saying 'Pizza Hat' on a Pizza
Hut ad
accidentally :) >>

Well, Russian has no phonemic /&/. There are only 5 vowel phonemes
in Russian: /a/, /e/, /o/, /u/ and /i/, the latter has two main
allophones in stressed syllables: [i] after palatalized ("soft")
consonants, [i\] after non-palatalized ("hard") ones. But they all
are realized as a good dozen of variants depending on stress and
palatalization.

----------------
Benct Philip Jonsson eskribiw:

<<Actually Polish _sz, cz, rz/.z_ *are* retroflex,
while _s' c' z'_ are alveopalatal.  The usual
Slavistic terminology and notation is more than a bit
confusing on this point.  I don't know if the so-called
'hard shibilants' ("harte Zischlaute") of other Slavic
languages are also retroflex.>>

That seems true that Russian _sh, zh_, and Polish _sz, rz/z*, cz_
sound "harder" than [S], [Z], [tS]. Still I'm not sure if they are
really retroflex. Most Russian manuals call them "double articulated
sibilants" and describe as velarized postalveolar fricatives. Maybe,
velarization adds to the impression of retroflexness. Ukrainian,
Czech etc. seem to have plain vanilla postalveolar fricatives.

I'd rather agree with Racsko Tamas:
<<Probably we have a different terminology than yours. We call this
articulation as "coronal", but the retroflex sounds are formed
futher back
on the palate.>>

-- Yitzik