Re: Affricatives

Staving Elyse Grasso :
>Are there back affricatives? The ones I can think of are English CH and
>J, and Japanese tsu and the voiced equivalent, and Pf. (Is there a
>voiced labial affricative found anywhere?)
>
>But English tends to front-load its consonants compared to languages
>like Arabic. And it's hard to have back affricatives in a language
>where the only back fricative is H and a lot of dialects don't even
>have that one.
>
>I can almost 'hear' a k affricating(?) with a German ch, though it would
>take practice to pronounce it. (Actually, the stop would be farther
>back than an English k.) And I'm not sure what a voiced form would
>sound like...
>
>
One of my conlangs, currently called "Montanic", has a sound change where
each of the fricatives from its parent language, Khangathyagon, has become
the corresponding affricate. This includes a glottal affricate, which
sounds a bit like coughing when I try to pronounce it.

f       th   s   sh    kh     h
[f]     [T] [s] [S]     [x]     [h]
v       dh   z   zh
[v]     [D] [z] [Z]

become

pf      tth  ts   ch            kkh     'h
[pf]    [tT] [ts] [tS]  [kx]    ['h]
bv      ddh  dz   j
[bv]    [dD] [dz] [dZ]

respectively.

Whether some of these exist in natlangs or not is another matter.

Pete Bleackley

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