52 phonemes of English?

[Laurence Horn]

On Nov 23, 2011, at 4:50 PM, James A. Landau wrote:

> Quick, maybe too quick, responses to Laurence Horn.
>
> About /ing/ and /ink/---Webster's New World does indeed show the pronunciation of "drink" as /dringk/,
> but if there is a transition from the voiced /g/ to the unvoiced /k/, I can't hear it

But there's no actual /n/ there; isn't it just a (voiced) velar nasal /N/ that ends up voiceless, hence /Nk/?  That's what I learned at my mammy's knee, or maybe it was Gleason's.
>
> In Russian "tsar" is indeed pronounced /tsar/, but most English-speakers pronunce both spellings "tsar" and "czar" as /zar/ with no leading /t/ and the sound before the "ar" being the voiced /z/.

True, but those speakers would probably domesticate or avoid "tzadik" and "tse-tse" as well.

>  Both versions of course, along with German "Kaiser" come from Latin "Caesar".  BTW I have a pet theory that in Latin the letter "c" before a front vowel did NOT change from /k/ ("hard c") to /s/ ("soft c") but instead went from /k/ to some other sound which most Romance languages converted to /s/.

I've encountered the view, or at least teach it, that the sound in question was in fact a palatalized /kj/ (assimilating to the front vowel) which became (among other things) /sj/ and eventually /S/ or /s/ or /C/, depending on its neighbors and such.
>
>
>> 50. Arguably not a part of English, but still encountered, the initial
> /ts/ of "tzadik" (Hebrew, a righteous person) and "tsetse" (African, an
> unrighteous insect)


>
> LH: True for Spain.  Isn't /h/ more likely in Mexico? Well, anyway, I think
> "chutzpah", "(big) macher", and "loch" are more likely suspects. And
> "Bach". And "Chanukah" for some speakers.  And "Khrushchev".
>
> me: in my limited contacts with New Word native Spanish speakers, I have most often heard "j" (and "g" before "e" or "i") pronounced as /kh/ but a noticeably midler /kh/ than in Hebrew or German.  That's why I like to call it "a half-hearted /kh/".  Any experts on hispanoamerican phonetics out there?

Not me, for sure.
>
> Most native speakers of English refer to Johann Sebastian /bak/. not /bakh/.

Ah, but many brie-eaters prefer /bakh/.  The same ones who trot out our nasalized [n]s when eating our flan while discussing Lacan.

LH

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