Re: Sob, it's true about uvular R

Sat, 6 Aug 2005 03:56:21 +0200: "G. Leo Sahakian"
<glsah@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

>> Many of my fellow Dutch speakers, who have a uvular r (I haven't) and
>> distinguish g from ch (I do, usually) can do this. I don't know how
>> they manage, but they do. Accents like this (there are many, very
>> different ones, that share just this feature) are quite common,
>> perhaps as many as 30 to 60% of the population in the Netherlands and
>> Belgium.
>> Word pairs like goot/groot, geen/green, gaan/graan and many others are
>> never confused in Dutch, no matter what accent is used.
>
>I think I know how they do it: g and back r are assimilated one way (g to r)
>or the other (r to g) resulting in a long fricative, voiced or voiceless,
>velar or postvelar, rolled?;

Some may do that, but I think most simply pronounce both sounds: first
fricative, then rolled. In some parts of the country (south of the
rivers) the g is less back than the r, so assimilation is less likely.
More to the north, g is almost as back as r.

>even if nl. has no long consonants oterwise; or
>has it, say at word boundaries or in composition?

There is some length variation, but it is thought to be unphonemic, or
only in cooperation with other differences.

>(he[t d]ierenziekenhuis,

Doesn't sound liek "het tieren ..", but it's not like two d's either.
Voiceless pressure build-up, voiced release?
Confer English "it does".

>o[pp]asser);

Just one p, phonetically, I'd say.

>even word-initially you can have a long fricative consonant;

Not in Dutch.

>ru. has it: ss- : preposition or prefix s + word beginning with s- : sadít'
>v. seat, set, place, ssadít' take down from a seat, help to alight; it even
>has long voiceless (!) stops: k komú, to whom, formerly pronounced xkamú,
>which made more sense; I dont know if you can hear a difference between k-
>and k k-; with k gólovu, to the head, read ggó..., at least you can hear the
>voiced hold between the closure and the release of the obstruction.

--
Ruud Harmsen - http://rudhar.com

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