teaching foreign languages at an early age

[Ariel Spigelman]

An interesting view of certain Spanish phoneticians (e.g. 
Marti?nez-Celdra?n 2004) is that the bilabial, dental, and velar 
fricatives in Spanish shouldn't be classified as fricatives at all, 
lacking as they do a "turbulent airstream...which is required for any 
fricative" (p. 203).  He rather classifies them as a kind of 
'spirantized approximant'.

Eugenio Marti'nez-Celdra'n (2004). Problems in the classification of 
approximants. /Journal of the International Phonetic Association/, 34, 
pp 201-210

On 18/01/11 12:48 PM, john at research.haifa.ac.il wrote:
> The /s/ you're talking about is used in northern Spain (it's from Basque).
> It feels to me like the difference from a 'normal' /s/ is that the passage for
> frication is formed more with the blade of the tongue than the tip.
> I don't think the /s/ for other Spanish speakers is in any way unusual (except
> that in many dialects it gets elided or forms a geminate with the following
> consonant in syllable-final position, but I don't think that's what you're
> talking about). One thing Spanish and Greek have in common is that both have
> voiced bilabial, dental, and velar fricatives (although the allophonic
> distribution of them is different), I personal don't know any other language
> with all three of these. But I don't know whether this is why they sound
> similar to me--maybe other people don't feel this way.
> John
>
>
>
>
> Quoting Johanna Rubba<jrubba at calpoly.edu>:
>
>> Spanish and Greek may sound similar in part because they both have an
>> unusual /s/. I don't know how to describe it phonetically; it sounds
>> "mushier" than /s/ in other IE languages. It's one of the things I
>> find attractive about both languages. They don't sound similar to me
>> otherwise; especially since Greek has theta (I'm used to American
>> Spanish, not Castilian) and /ks/.
>>
>> Dr. Johanna Rubba, Ph. D.
>> Professor, Linguistics
>> Linguistics Minor Advisor
>> English Dept.
>> Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo
>> San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
>> Ofc. tel. : 805-756-2184
>> Dept. tel.: 805-756-2596
>> Dept. fax: 805-756-6374
>> E-mail:jrubba at calpoly.edu
>> URL:http://cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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