thy thigh etc.

Stefan Georg Georg-Bonn at t-online.de
Mon Jun 4 18:01:10 UTC 2001


>Oh, indeed they are foreign.  It's only in Schwyzer Düütsch that we find
>initial [x] in native words, and no variety has initial [ç] in them.
>But that's beside the point.  If Duden's pronunciations are factually
>correct -- a rather large assumption -- then [x] and [ç] do contrast in
>initial position and must therefore be assigned to different phonemes.
>Unless we want to say that foreign words *as foreign* have a different
set of phonemes than native ones, quod Deus avertat.

Qua de causa avertat ? When I'm pronouncing /Chalid/ as /xali:d/ I'm
using a patch of Arabic in my German discourse, whether I know much
Arabic apart from that or not.

If Duden gave the "correct" pronunciation of /Xhosa/ with the correct
click, we would have a click phoneme in German. Give me a job in that
editors' board and I'll triple the number of phonemes in this
language.

Those pronunciations for /Chalid/ etc. are indeed artificial. Duden
people just want to be educational when they indicate how these words
should be pronounced, i.e. as close to the pronunciation in the
source language as possible. The set of words given to illustrate the
initial ç:x contrast is of a sort that I'm sure I've never met a
German speaker who can take an oath to have used each one of them at
least once in his life in some meaningful context. In English words
and names we try to (are told to) observe /th/, /w:v/ as in the
source language as well. I'm pretty sure Duden tells us to, too. So
what, is there a /w : v/ contrast in G. ? Not for sose vis a
Hollyvood G. accent, who still are se majorrity ...

StG
--
Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn



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