Glottal stop frequency

[Liland Brajant Ros']

>From: "Alan H. Hartley" <ahartley at D.UMN.EDU>
>
>Young and Morgan's _Navaho Language_ (not the most recent word) has
>diné, where the accented e carries high tone: no indication of glottal
>stop (which, incidentally, they say is the most common consonantal sound
>in Navaho).

Diné is the way I'm used to seeing it in Navajo texts; my guess is the "h"
is strictly an accommodation for anglos, to keep us from accidently
pronouncing it to rhyme with "a fine line". As for the frequency of the
glottal stop, isn't that true in German, too, though it's never written (the
general rule being that all word-initial written vowels are preceded in
speech by a glottal stop, the failure to know this and/or act on the
knowledge being a significant part of what gives many very fluent speakers
of German as a Second Language their foreign accent)?

>[Montagnais etymology notes] The erroneous belief that Eskimo was a
>pejorative term meaning 'eater of raw meat' had a major influence on
>this shift." Shades of SQUAW...

I thought there was a legitimate Micmac etymology for it that did mean "he
eats it raw". But then, I don't know much Micmac.

>ESKIMO is still a valuable term, the only one I know of that covers all
>Eskimo-speaking people from Siberia to Greenland.

Yes, and most of the (mainly Alaskan) Eskimos I know never showed any sign
of changing either their self-identifier or what they would tolerate in me
and thee.

lilEnd


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