Re: How to Make Chicken Cacciatore (was: phonetics by guesswork)

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@M...> wrote:

> The example given in my dictionary is the final sound of the German
> words |Rat| and |Rad|.  Both are pronounced the same way, even though
> /t/ and /d/ are separate phonemes in other environments.   So instead
> of writing /Rat/ or /Rad/, either of which implies a distinction which
> is not made, you can use archiphonetic notation, which normally involves
> slashes around the symbol for one of the phonemes involved in the
> merger: /Ra/t//
I don't know how "real" Germans treat the subject, but I
personally distinguish voiced and unvoiced stops even finally,
and always find it strange when people claim such words to
sound identical.

While both might be pronounced voiceless in this position, I
give the latter a longer and more intense closure (obstruction?
intermission of airflow? I don't know the exact term here).  I
believe this is called a fortis/lenis distinction.  It's the
same thing that lets you distinguish "bead" from "beat" and
"vein" from "feign" even when whispering.

Is this a personal, regional or national idiolect, or does it
apply to all of the German language domain?  How come the
dictionaries pretend it not to exist?  Is this even a case of
Frenchesque linguistic prescriptivism?  ;o)


-- Christian Thalmann

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