Re: subconscious sound preferences
| From: | Herman Miller <hmiller@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Saturday, January 2, 1999, 2:04 |
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On Fri, 1 Jan 1999 10:24:20 +1300, Andrew Smith
<hobbit@...> wrote:
>On Thu, 31 Dec 1998, Herman Miller wrote:
>
>> Probably. I haven't heard a recording of Maori, so I can only go by =
the
>> descriptions in books. It's similar to the "wh" in some dialects of
>> English.
>>
>I have read somewhere that "wh" in Maori was originally a bilabial
>fricative. Southern Maori pronounced it as /h/ and other dialects as =
/w/.
>Modern speakers pronounce it as /f/ which may be a shift influenced by
>English speakers.
Hlererhoi "hw" is actually more like a labialized [h], but the "ph" =
sounds
in Niskloz and Olaetyan are bilabial fricatives. "Hw" was originally an
allophone of /f/ before back vowels, but the two low vowels merged into =
one
phoneme /a/, and the two sounds now contrast in Hlererhoi: /fama/ =
"perfect
fourth (musical interval)" vs. /Wama/ "clover" (Jarrda: "fam").