Re: IPA griefs

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> > The term varies. I've seen "postalveolar", "prepalatal",
> > "palatoalveolar". Never use the term "palatal" however; that's reserved
> > for the likes of IPA /c/, /ç/, /j/ "key", "ich" (German) and "you".
>
>Waitasec--now *I'm* confused.  I thought English "k" was /k/.
In English, /k/ often becomes more palatal before /i/. So phonemically,
"key" is /ki/ but phonetically it could be represented as [ci]. I would not
do so however, because I don't think it moves forward far enough. I would
just call it a fronted /k/. I currently working on a natlang that does
appear to have palatal stops, and they do not sound like the beginning of
"key".

>   _The
>Korean Alphabet_ lists "j" (McCune-Reischauer transliteration of Korean)
>as /c/ and "ch" as /c^h/ (aspirate), so I thought /c/ was something very
>similar to English /dZ/.  /c/ really is as in "key"?  <confusion>  I was
>so happy to know what the IPA's for Korean sounds were, and now it seems
>something is very wrong here!
English does not have [c], except possibly as an allophone of /k/.

>While I'm at it, is /x/ as in German "ach"?  Or do I have that one wrong,
>too?
No, that's right.




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Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
   -- Kenneth Hale
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