s > r (Spanish)

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
"Alan R. King" <mccay at redestb.es> wrote:
 
>I am
>almost certain that the pronunciation of such /sr/ phoneme sequences as
>those mentioned by Roger Wright is something different from (and
>phonetically more complex than) a single trilled /r/; the phonetic
>representations [lor'ejes], [ira'el] etc. feel wrong (to me): something's
 
([lo'rejes] of course)
 
>missing in them.  Or is this merely because I know how they are spelt??
>
>Would I be saying something totally absurd if I suggested that the
>assimilated /s/ in these contexts is more like a "rolled [z]" than a normal
>Spanish /r/?
 
I'm afraid so...  Now I do agree that there may be someting more than
just /rr/ in /irrael/ <Israel>.  I'm not absolutely sure, because my
native language is Castilian with some interference from Catalan (and
Dutch), and if I say /irrael/ now it's the result of a conscious
effort to mend my native spelling-pronunciation ways (I suppose the
Castilian spoken in the Basque country may be similarly affected).
 
But it's my impression that the initial part of [rr] in <Israel> and
similar words is voiceless, making it [r.rr] or [hrr], reflecting the
voicelessness of the [s] that used to be there.  Spanish /s/ is very
very reluctant indeed to become voiced [it rather becomes [h] or [r]
than [z]], and a word like <asno> for me is always [asno], never
[azno].  The same phenomenon, who am I telling, is even stronger in
Basque, where <z> (voiceless!) and <s> assimilate forwards, ezta?
(=ez da).
 
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam