Re: OT: German pronunciation question

Greetings people, :-))

As a german native speaker, I would answer "no" to Andreas' question.
Knowing Swiss, German and Austrian German (the latter is my native one),
I cannot think of a case where one of these consonants would be unvoiced.
I tried to pronounce it that way for several example words - such as
streicheln, gähnen, lang, Esel, zahm, wahr - and I found it extremely
difficult to make unvoiced /m/, /n/, /N/, /r/ or even /l/.

Tristan is right that final /r/ is not often pronounced seperately.
Directly following "e" it becomes a schwa sound. Otherwise, as in
"wahr", it is typically dropped completely with a very very soft trace
of schwa being the only remainder.

Of course, trailing /r/ can also be pronounced audibly. To my ears this
would sound somewhat unusual, stern or even pedantic. But the Austrians
are widely known to pronounce some words rather, let's say, relaxed.
*gg*

Cheers,
Harald

>Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
>>I've got a little question for the phonologically savvy Germanophones on
>>the list: Is final /m n N r l/ supposed to be wholly or partially unvoiced?
>>
>>
>Isn't final /r/ pronounced [6]? or is that only in Swiss German or
>something?
>
>Tristan.

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