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

From:M. Astrand <ysimiss@...>
Date:Monday, August 18, 2003, 20:39
>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." _____________________________________________________________ Kuukausimaksuton nettiyhteys: http://www.suomi24.fi/liittyma/ Yli 12000 logoa ja soittoääntä: http://sms.suomi24.fi/

Replies

Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Chris Bates <christopher.bates@...>