Pronouncing #mC

[Alina Israeli]

>NaˆØve speakers will swear they pronounce it as written, but from what I
>can observe, the velum does not close for the /g/ (such a rapid and
>precisely timed sequence of movements, from closed for the vowel, to
>open for the /m/, to closed for the /g/, to open for the /n/, would be
>quite a feat for the clumsy velum, even in a French speaker).

I think that's where the native/non-native problems are. When I was
learning English, one of the hardest words for me was North, the American
way: curl the tongue for [r] and quickly stick it out between the teeth.
Hard work!

Russians have no problems pronouncing Mga (a place) or mgla (not reduced to
*mla). mgno- [mgna-] in mgnovenie is very similar to [mgla], the only
difference is that in [mgna-] the vowel is unstressed and reduced, while in
[mgla] it is stressed. While French and Italian no longer pronounce the
[gn] combination, Russian has no problems. [The effects of native speaker
consciousness are so pervasive, that my professor of linguistics/phonetics
at a rather known American university some 25 year ago was telling us that
the reduction of kn->n, pn ->n and gn->n is a linguistic universal, and us,
the students tried to convince him of the opposite with our French, Russian
and German examples.]

Combinations sonorant-stop-sonorant are not terribly common in Russian, but
we can find a few more words:
somknut' and with all of other prefixes, for example.

__________________________
 Alina Israeli
 LFS, American University
 4400 Mass. Ave., NW
 Washington, DC 20016

 phone:    (202) 885-2387
 fax:      (202) 885-1076 

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