Re: Your first "linguistic" memory

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 00:12:56 +0000: António Marques <m.ap@xxxxxxx>: in
sci.lang:

>Where did I read that initial <z-> was [s] in dutch nowadays, then? Does
>it happen somewhere?

Yes, in some accents, notably those from Amsterdam. This also leads to
hypercorrections. Normally, <zee> starts with [z] and <C> (the letter
and programming language) with [s], but I had a collegue, originally
from Amsterdam, who often pronounced <C> the same as <zee>. Probably
because of his natural inclination to say [seI] for both <zee> and
<C>.

There are also people who do use [z], but of a less voiced variety,
which is audible in one often repeated announcement on the radio, in
English, "3FM presents", where the intervocalic <s> isn't [s], but not
fully [z] either, which makes it (irritatingly, to my taste) unnatural
for real English. I then think "why don't you use your own language if
you can't speak another one properly". The station is otherwise in
Dutch!

Cf. many Scandinavians, who have this same problem. Many examples in
the otherwise reasonable (I think, CMIIW) English on Abba records.

>Portuguese has kept the diphthong /uj~/ in one word only, _muito_, for
>centuries (and we don't even write it).

And it has no basis in etymology. Or is it from the l in multu?
Fascinating indeed.

>Galician has been keeping its
>only instance of word-medial intervocalic either (according to analysis)
> /N/ or /(u)~/ in the word derived from latin _una_.

And derivatives algunha, ningunha etc., I think.

Cf. the emphatic (velarised) [l] in Arabic <allah>, which occurs in no
other words. (But it does in vernaculars?)
--
Ruud Harmsen - http://rudhar.com

.

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