Re: CHAT: R: Re: CHAT: silly names

Henrik wrote:

> > AFAIK, Switzerland has been the first nation to abolish the 'es zet'
(ß).
>
> They are simply ignorant. :-)  In Switzerland they never used ß.
Hey, I'm, curious: can you understand people speaking Schwitzerdütsch? I
live on the Italian-Swiss border, and, even if in Southern Switzerland
people speak Italian, I can see SF (Schweizer Fernsehen) programmes, besides
TSI (Televisione della Svizzera Italiana) ones. They *never* speak German.
Only the Tagesschau has a couple of civil guys who actually can utter German
(and those are the only ones I can roughly understand). My German utteral is
surely not the best one can have, but my impression is that common Swiss men
can correctly pronounce a sentence only if they see it written down. What do
you think?

Schwitzerdütsch sounds really strange: they generally realize /k/ and /g/
both as /q/; there is no distinction between the 'ich' and the 'ach' sounds,
which are both reandered very deeply - meseems they are something close to
pharyngeals, and they often get syllabic. For istance, they do not pronounce
'ich' /iç/, but /i.H=/.

Thus 'ich komme' is not /iç kOm:e/, but /i.H= qOm@/.

I wonder: are there other natlangish examples where /k/ gives /q/?

> > On the other hand, I seem to recall there was a German Land which didn't
> > accept it (Niedersachsen?)... but I may be wrong...
>
> `It' here is something different, namely the spelling reformation.
Indeed.

> The reformation was rejected by the people of Schleswig-Holstein, but
> was then still introduced for conformance with the federation.
Oh, yeah... my teacher comes from Schleswig Holstein and is very proud about
that : )

> In short: in theory, all German-language countries now write according
> to the new spelling rules, but:
>
>    a) Switzerland, I'm sure, still ignores the existence of ß, and
>       thus writes differently,
>
>    b) Many people don't like the new spelling (usually because of the
>       inconsistencies.  Inconsistencies and irregularities have been
>       claimed to be removed, but old ones are still there and
>       new ones were created).
: )

Luca

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