R in the nordic countries was: Re: Ergativity/Apologies

>> I've always thought that finnish or maybe
>> swedish would be an interesting language to learn, although of course
>> I'd still have the problem that I can't get the rs right (same problem
>> in spanish :( )... finnish has an alveolar trilled r doesn't it? Is an
>> uvular r an acceptable substitute or does it make you sound wrong?
Finnish: I've got distant cousins who have uvular r (they are somewhat
well-off, though, so I guess that's got something to do with it), I use
trilled r (which I also have as the main allophone of my Swedish r too).
My Swedish r varies between approximant and trill depending on
style/dialect/loudness and phonetic realization.

>As far as Swedish is concerned, uvular R is used by large numbers of native
>speakers. If you can supply any sort of voiced alveolar, retroflex or
uvular
>trill or approximant, you should be pretty OK.
Yeah, r comes in every stripe here. [Some experiments later, using my little
brother as guinea pig:] even laryngeal fricatives sound semi-realistic.
(Someone with a speech-impediment could sound a bit like that) He understood
every word perfectly..


- Markus Miekk-oja

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