thy thigh etc.

[Leo A. Connolly]

I (Connolly) wrote:

>> 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.

Stefan Georg wrote:

> 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.

Certainly if you say [d] rather than [t].

> 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.

Get people to say them and you certainly would.

> 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 ...

I agree, of course, that no German has had the opportunity to use *all*
of the examples in normal speech.  But haven't you noticed an increased
tendency to say [xa-] in some words of foreign origin spelt with <cha->?

 Channukah comes to mind.  Once they're in, beside others in <cha->
pronounced [ça-] (not to mention [ka-]), it's hard to say that the
phonemes haven't become established.  Such things do happen.  In OE, [v
z] were allophones of /f s/, restricted to medial position.  Yet modern
English is full of words with initial [v- z-], of which only _vat_ and
_vixen_ (and possibly two others) are native, though they entered the
standard language from southern dialects which now show initial voicing.

 Of course, it's too early to say whether /x-/ and /ç-/ will become
established in German, but the process seems to have begun.

Leo Connolly