thy thigh etc.

[Stefan Georg]

>>  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].

Good point.

>>  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.

Also a good point.

>>  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->?

Maybe. But that's an increased tendency to be aware of foreign
phonemes, an increased openness for the outside world, and certainly
an increase which increases with education. Whatever this means for a
phoneme system.

StG

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