Re: Rating Languages

From: "David Peterson" <DigitalScream@...>
> In a message dated 9/26/01 3:58:05 AM, dnsulani@ZAHAV.NET.IL writes:
>
> << Most of the time, when I treat this difficulty,
> the client has no problems with the voiceless sounds and needs to be
taught
> how to produce the voiced equivalents. Although the opposite problem
> (no voiceless sounds) is not unknown to me. >>
>
>     That'd be because voiceless sounds are far less common and harder to
> produce. In fact, my phonology professor has argued (with PRAAT data to
back
> it up), that there is, in fact, no [g] in English, but, rather, [k]
without
> aspiration.  For instance, he took the [k] in "skum" and removed it and
> placed it in front of the syllable "un" and it sounded EXACTLY like "gun".
> It was creepy...
That feels backwards.

I mean, the aspiration and not the voicing is basically what
English-speakers use to differentiate pairs like <k> and <g>, so that [k] is
heard as an allophone of /g/ and not /k_h/, but I don't know that [k] is
said for /g/ to the exclusion of [g].

(At least, I'm pretty sure I don't say it.  I actually have trouble saying
unaspirated stops like in "Tao" when speaking English.  But in Spanish I
don't have any problem.)


    *Muke!