>>>Any rhotic? Does that cover the Parisian uvular approximant, the trilled
>>>uvular still occasionally heardin France and found in parts of north
Wales,
>>>e.g. and the Chinese sound denoted by {r} in Pinyin, i.e. [z`]?
>>
>>To disallow [z`] for /r/ would seem a bit drastic to me. That may be
because
>>it's a not too uncommon allophone of /r/ in my own speech ...
>>
>>But according to the nearest encyclopaedia, Mandarin |r| is [Z], which's
of
>>course already phonematic in Futurese.
>
>According to what I've understood, the Mandarin |r| is _not_ [Z], it is
>[z`] (voiced retroflex fricative). It's certainly the way described by
>Paul Kratochvik in "The Chinese Language Today", and in "Modern Chinese: a
>Basic Course" published by Beijing University.
I think it doesn't matter if Chinese pronounce <r> as
postalveolar or as retroflex, because both of them
would be allophones of /Z/ (a retroflex zh still sounds
too much like a zh).
Cheers,
Javier