Danish Spelling

[Lars Henrik Mathiesen]

> From: "David L. White" <dlwhite at texas.net>
> Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 09:41:18 -0600

>> Which phoneme do those plain voiceless stops belong to? They sound
>> exactly like the /bdg/ you get in initial position. They don't sound
>> like initial /ptk/. So why shouldn't <stave> (spell) be /sda:u/?

>         Because "d" is not the IPA symbol for any voiceless stop.

I was using // to denote phonemic transcription, which I think is
common practice. ([] being phonetic, and <> graphemic).

By your criterion, phonemic transcription would have to use something
like /p_ht_hk_h/ and /ptk/ to denote the two series of stops in
Danish, which would be inconvenient.

>         But what I was working up to here, before I got derailed by my own
> errors, was that the spelling of Gaelic, and "phonetic" transcription of
> Danish) indicate that an original contrast of voice can be re-analyzed as a
> contrast of aspiration, in which case spellings like "sg-" and
> "transcriptions" like [sd-] can make sense.

I think we agree, then.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn at diku.dk> (Humour NOT marked)