Re: You meet the oddest people on the Internet

Hi!

Danny Wier <dawiertx@...> writes:
> ...
> He or she is also wrong; actually Common Germanic *h after a vowel has two
> allophones in German, [x] after back vowels, and [C] after front vowels
> (inc. Umlauts) and consonants.
[x] is another valid allophone, too, but most German dialects have [X]
vs. [C] instead of [x].  At least some Autrian dialects have [x] and I
read one description that listed [X] after /a/, [x] after /o/ and /u/
and [C] in other cases.  I never (consciously) heard anyone
distinguish this, though.

John wrote:
> This also made me realize, thinking about it, that I use X, or at least
> something between x and X, for the ach-laut; I wonder if I picked
> this up from my mother (native speaker) or not.
That's the standard pronunciation, yes.

> I still wonder why, however, <ch> is [C] after consonants, as in _dorch_
> "through" [dO@C].
It's actually 'durch'.  I have [du:IC] for this word, so a clear front
vowel. :-) Standard would be [du:6C], though.

**Henrik

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