More on dental fricatives

Larry Trask larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk
Mon Nov 13 12:24:57 UTC 2000


Ed Selleslagh writes:

[on final /d/ in European Spanish]

> On the other hand, I often hear an edh in 'Madrid', 'laúd' etc. Or is
> there something wrong with my hearing ?

No; this is the more widespread pronunciation in Spain.  But it is
not the pronunciation used in the north, in and around the Basque
Country, where theta is usual.

[on Spanish final /d/ as theta taken into Basque]

> Probably they are just using the Spanish pronunciation. The same thing
> happens with English computer terms in Western languages.

Yes, but the curious thing is that they accept phonetic theta when
it represents Spanish /d/, but not when it represents Spanish theta.

> Note that there are virtually no monolingual Basques left, so the necessity
> to convert the phonemes (OR 'phones??´) when borrowing may not be so strong
> any more.

Nevertheless, Spanish phonemic theta is *always* rendered in Basque as
the laminal sibilant <z>, and never as phonetic theta.

> What do the French Basques say, who don't speak Spanish? THAT will be
> interesting!

I have no data, I'm afraid.  Hualde didn't look at this, and I can't
recall hearing a French Basque pronounce a suitable recent borrowing
from French.  Anyway, there really are no ordinary lexical items
ending in /d/ in the kind of southern French spoken in and near the
French Basque Country.  A word that has final /d/ in standard Parisian
French always has a following schwa in this southern French, and this
schwa is always taken into French Basque as /a/.  For example, French
<parade> comes into French Basque as <parada>.  I guess we really need
a suitable French acronym, but I can't think of one.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: 01273-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: 01273-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)



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