Re: Danish: tonal suffices?

>From: Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...>
>Subject: Re: Danish: tonal suffices?
>Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 18:45:14 +0200
>I think your perception of tone here is actually stî ‰'m sure that a
>glottal-catch could in certain circumstances be perceived as a falling
>tone to the untrained ear. When you add '-e', stੳ dropped; <dreng>
>[drEN?] becomes <drenge> [drEN@].
I'm not very good with vowel phonetics, but I really don't perceive the
vowel in 'dreng' as an [E]...is that what the dictionary gives? I perceive
it closer to [a] (closer, not exactly equal to) or even the diphthong [ai].
But then [E] is pretty close to [a] already, so perhaps I'm wrong. As I say,
vowel phonetics is not my thing; I'm more into consonants.

Furthermore, the [@] often assimilates
>to the preceding voiced continuant (if any), so you'd have [drEN?]
>becoming [drENN=] -- utterances that sound almost identical except for
>the presence or absence of stਯr to the untrained ear; the presence
>or absence of a falling tone <-- Hint hint: there's an idea for a
>conlang!)
What is [=]? Length? I'll very well accept the [NN] transcription; what I
perceived as a long vowel is much rather a long final continuant. As to the
hint, well thanks, I'm already into it! :)

Sometimes I perceive Danish phonology as so unusual that I get doubts that
its phenomena can be transcribed with IPA, or even described by conventional
phonetics at all! I know it must be possible, but it's just like a feeling,
you know :) And I'm definitely not the only one; my fellow countrymen often
joke that it can hardly be a human language at all! (Icelandic has a very
different phonetic character to that of Danish - perhaps analogous to that
of French vs Spanish and Italian). The Icelandic slang for 'speaking Danish'
is "speaking with the potato in your throat" ;)

Oskar
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