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Re: another silly phonology question

From:H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>
Date:Tuesday, November 28, 2000, 17:29
On Tue, Nov 28, 2000 at 12:04:35AM -0500, Roger Mills wrote:
> H.S.Teoh -- not silly -- wrote: > Ditto for Malay, which > >also has [h] but no other glottals that I'm aware of (unless what I think > >is a velar/uvular fricative is actually a glottal? -- i.e., the [x] or [X] > >sound in {akhir}).> > In Indonesia, it's pretty clearly a velar; maybe because of their > exposure to Dutch (and older folks who still remember). But I don't know > what it might have been in the Arabic original. All the sounds you mention > (except s) are borrowed, mostly from Arabic. In Malaysia, /sh/ possibly > from English too.
[snip] Ummm... /sh/ or /sy/ sounds a lot more like a palatal fricative than a postalveolar (ie. closer to [C] than [S]). Furthermore, it only occurs in more archaic-sounding words, and not in any English loanwords that I know of -- e.g., dahsyat (terrible), shah (royal name particle). It might be from Arabic, but I seriously doubt it's from English. T -- The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners... -- Slashdotter