Re: Pharingials, /l/ vs. /r/ in Southeast Asia

At 17:57 6.2.2004, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:
>
> > At 11:21 6.2.2004, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> >
> > >'Cerebral stop'? Explanation of origin of that term?
> >
> > Sloppy translation of the Sanskrit term for 'retroflex'.
>
>Ah ...
>
>A better translation would be?
Cacuminal.


> > >It may amuse you, Ray, btw, that a book of my father's on Qin Shi Huangdi,
> > in
> > >the section on pinyin pronunciation, transcribes 'sh' as 'sjr'. This of
> > course
> > >assumes the convention that 'sj' in transcribed Furn is [S].
> >
> > That's a lovely one!  How does it distinguish _q_ and _x_, since they
> > oughtta both end up as _tj_ in transkribed Furn.
>
>The 'q' as 'tj', but I'm not positive what they used for 'x'. May have
>been 'sj'. But it wasn't so much a systematic retranscription as a rough and
>ready guide to pronouncing pinyin words occuring in the book roughly
>correctly - not all letters and digraphs were explained.
>
>"Qin Shi Huangdi" became _Tjin Sjri Hoangdi_.
>
>Is that "trans_k_ribed" intentional, btw?
Of course :)  Actually I typo'ed, then spotted it,
but left it in intentionally.


>                                                   Andreas
>
>PS Is there any good reason that pinyin 'y' and 'w' become 'i' and 'u' when
>preceeded by a cosyllabic consonant?
Tradition?  OTOH if they used _i u_ for *all* non-nuclear instances they
would free up _y_ for /y/!

And which looks best of _xiao_ and _xyaw_?

/BP 8^)
--
   B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
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