Re: another silly phonology question

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

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