Re: Futurese

Raymond Brown wrote:
>At 4:20 pm +0000 3/5/02, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> >Raymonb Brown wrote:
> >>
> >>[snip]
> >>
> >> >And, as I said, the trill would just be the "ideal"
> >> >pronounciation; for /r/ any rhotic (including that Chinese
> >> >"er") will do as long as you make clear the difference with
> >> >/l/ and /d/.
> >>
> >>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 wasn't saying you were wrong - I said that according to the closest
encyclopaedia, Mandarin |r| is [Z]. This might be outright wrong, merely
reflect inexact use of the IPA by the encyclopaedists, or an actual Chinese
(variant) pronuncation - I'm in no position to tell (Chang, feel like
weighing in?).

In any case [Z] and [z`] are close enough that it's surely preferable to
avoid realizing /r/ as [z`], were one to speak Futurese.

                                                      Andreas

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