Re: USAGE: rhotics (was: Advanced English + Babel text)

On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 19:29:30 -0500, Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:

>Actually, I didn't really believe my friend.  He said my "r" pronunciation
>in German wasn't "robust" enough, but sounded French.
I fear we'll never know what he meant...

>  Actually, I think my
>best linguistic gifts lie in phonic mimicry.  (Which is why I thought of
>becoming an actress in my late teens).  I have a very good ear for
>pronunciations and can usually reproduce them pretty well, which has gotten
>me in trouble a few times when my rapid comprehension was not up to my
>speaking.
A most remarkable and seldom gift! I've known A Swiss German who told me
that native speaker of Spanish had taken him for mentally challenged because
of his lack of vocabulary.

>> I've always thought of the German non-rhoticity to
>> be related to the uvular realization of the /r/, but that might be wrong.
>
>It might be right.  I've heard "der" pronounced as though it rhymes with
>British English "hair."
German |her| and non-rhotic English |hair| may both be [hE6]

>> By the way, I assume that English also had a trill-flap /r/ originally,
>> but is there any evidence on the time it was fricativized?
>
>I'm unsure what you mean by fricativized when speaking of British English
>pronunciation.  Do you mean "flapped"?  Retroflex?
I should have said 'approximazed' (or something alike). For what I know,
English /r/ may be retroflex, but not necessarily, but it's almost always an
approximant [r\], not a trill-tap (as e.g. in Scots).

>Are you Swiss?  Do you or have you live(d) in Switzerland?
Yes, I do, I live in Berne and speak Bernese German.

g_0ry@_0s:
j. 'mach' wust

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