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

>Date:         Sat, 16 Aug 2003 00:47:28 +0300
>From: Markus Miekk-oja <fam.miekk-oja@...>
>Subject:      Re: [CONLANG] R in the nordic countries was: Re:
Do I dare to throw in my 1,68 eurocents? This bothers me...

>>> 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.
I think uvular r is also what Suvianne Siimes (a politician) uses... It sounds
like a speech defect to me. Of course, I can't know for sure. Stranger things
are done on purpose.
Still, if my aesthetical opinion counts, I would really prefer an Anglo-American
speaker to substitute the trill in Finnish with whatever he uses in English
- approximant? - as long as he remembers to pronounce it in the ends of syllables.
If one has to have an accent, I do find it would be best to at least use
one's own.

Anyway, probably most Finnish children can't yet manage [r] at their third
birthday, so if it takes one three years to learn it, one would still have
beaten Finns. :)

Some of my cousins use a quite original sound, which apparently consists
of a tap or a few trills plus a short lateral and sounds particularly nice.
And for some reason, I seem to associate a fricativish r with Southwestern
Finland... but I do not know much about the Western dialects.


(As for Swedish, by the way, I have lately picked the common habit to realize
/rd/, /rl/, /rn/ as [r\`d`], [r\`l`], [r\`n`], which I truth to speak find
rather ugly sounding, but like the way it *feels*... ;) )


>
>- Markus Miekk-oja

- M. Astrand
"Neeba." - "Teeba?" - "Qeesvefar la:lka." - "Djo:ly."
"Guess what?" - "What?" - "I've learned how to speak." - "Great."

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