LL-L "Phonology" 2004.05.13 (09) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 13.MAY.2004 (09) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2004.05.13 (06) [E]

Dear Reinhard,

WRT the voiced /h/ in Afrikaans

    Can it not be put down to the fact that it is simply easier to say?
    May I quote an example from C Louis Leipoldt, who cited this to show
that English is a gutteral Language, whereas Afrikaans is not (sometimes an
Englishman uses the word 'gutteral' as a tactful circumlocution for 'harsh'
or merely 'hard to speak').

    He said this, "Repeat, 'Holy, Holy, Holy. Lord God of Hosts, Heaven &
Earth are full of thy Glory. Halleluja!' " as he did not feel it necessary
to say, with an RP English accent of course.
    Even though it is most notable with the 'h', if you pay attention you
will feel that nearly all the sound in that sentence comes from the same
point in the throat, low down.
    Now say it with an Afrikaans accent, and, of course, voicing the 'h'.
Now the sound starts some centimetres further up, into the mouth, where the
back vowels are made. & I theeenk you will find you have a whole lot more
breath at the end of the sentence!

    It seems to me that languages that use the unvoiced 'h' a lot, like
English, are in a process of evolution from the loss of an initial aspirated
consonant. e.g. 'kwaer' (Old Northumbrian - & Inglis) = 'hwaer' Anglo Saxon)
= 'where' (Modern English) = 'waar' (Afrikaans). With apologies, I use this
example only because it is so blatant.
    By the way, a lot of 'casual' English is taking the dialect route. The
glottal stop is taking the place of many unvoiced aspirated consonants, for
example, "Wo' a lo' of ro'!" = "What a lot of rot!" It seems to me the first
is a whole lot more - effortless, assuming that's what you want from a
language.

    I imagine The Afrikaans 'h' will ultimately fade out of use as it merges
with the encroaching (following) vowel, the end of the evolutionary process.

    By the way, have you had a look at the nasalised 'n' in Afrikaans, in
consideration of the same thing in Portuguese, among the neighbouring
Romance languages? 'Dans, Frans, Kaans' (Nederlands) to 'Dañs, Frañs, kaañs'
(Afrikaañs)? & then from 'pan' to 'poao', 'Lisbon' to 'Lisboa', 'Saint Paul'
to 'Sao Paolo'.

Yrs Sincerely,
    Mark.

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Phonology

>  Can it not be put down to the fact that it is simply easier to say?

That's easy for *you* to say, apparently not for the majority of the rest of
the world population.  ;-)

I mentioned that the sound exists in Slavonic varieties where it is a
derivation from /g/ via fricative [ɣ], both voiced phones.  You find it also
in some of the languages of Papua-New Guinea and Irian Jaya (e.g., in
Abakwi), also in some Athabascan languages of North America, in Georgian and
some other varieties of the Caucasus, in Korean ...  Hmmm ...  It does occur
in some African languages, including Zulu, Xhosa and Shona, and these
languages have this sound as a part of aspiration as well!

Why should /h/ assimilate to a following vowel (which is voiced) by turning
voiced?  Do /p/, /k/ etc. automatically do so?  No.  However, I can see your
point, given that none of the languages I know have an underlying (phonetic)
pair /h/ vs /ɦ/* (i.e., voiceless h vs voiced h), so /h/ could in theory
"feel free" to assimilate.  But it doesn't, at least not in most languages.

(*The only relevant language varieties I know of are the Shanghai dialect
and related dialects of Wu Chinese.  It doesn't actually have this
opposition phonetically; it has been only theoretically posited as phonemic
to account for peculiar tone sandhi.  Voiced "h" is also posited as an
Ancient Chinese phoneme.)

So ... Did the voiced "h" in Afrikaans ...
(1) come from Europe?
(2) come from Khoi-San and/or Bantu varieties?
(3) spring up independently?

As for nasalization (assimilation of vowels to following nasal consonants)
in Afrikaans, I personally see it merely as a more "extreme" form of what
exists in the European Lowlands.  Many Lowlands Saxon varieties nasalize
pretty strongly also, though the nasal consonant is not deleted in the
process as it can be in Afrikaans (e.g., Afrikããs).  This more "extreme"
form in Afrikaans could have been developed independently or could have been
reinforced by other languages.  Sure, the Portuguese were "down there."  But
their nasalized vowels have quite a different color, usually involving
diphthongs with medialized vowels.  So why not go for the obvious and
consider the influence of the many, many French Huguenots that came to be
absorbed into the Afrikaans-speaking population?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

P.S.: By the way, if any of you want to hear what some of the more "exotic"
phones of the world sound like, you might visit the following page (with
clickable words for audio):
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/index/sounds.html

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