Fricatives (was Re: Hda / Sna)

[Koontz John E]

On Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Rory M Larson wrote:
> In teach-yourself language books, the example I've seen most
> often is German "sagen".  (Accent on first syllable, pronounce
> 's' as [z], 'a' as [a], 'e' as schwa, 'n' as [n], and go into
> doing the 'g' in the middle as [g], except don't quite hit it.
> This produces a sound somewhere between [g] and [y].  English
> "say" is the same word; we took it all the way to [y].)

In Old English it is written s<ae>g (<ae> = aesc, the ae digraph), but
they usually put a dot over the g in modern student editions to remind you
to pronounce it y.  There's a long tradition among languages scholars of
putting dots under and over things.

JEK