Re: German Spelling Reform (fwd)

R. Nierse <rnierse@...> wrote:

> Once I heared the opposite: someone from Chile pronouced Guaran=ED as
> [waran=ED]. Sort of hypercorrection.
No, it wasn't this time. AFAIK Guaran=ED was actually /wara'ni/ by
its own speakers. The language IIRC doesn't even have voiced stops
except as prenasalized stops, mb, nd, ng (I might be wrong here, but
probably not).

In any case, the velar quality of /w/ and /g/ are easy to confuse.
Since /g/ is mostly [G] in Spanish, the stop doesn't have the 'strength'
to make itself noticed (in rapid speech, it's an approximant!) and
most times you don't know if a person pronounced /w/ or a very weak /g/.


--Pablo Flores