From: jcowan@reutershealth.com
Date: Tue Feb 03 2004 - 11:43:40 EST
Philippe Verdy scripsit:
> Which words? "hungry", "hunger", "Hungary", "Henry" ? I don't know a
> syllable-initial /h/ in English out of word-initial /h/... And even in that
> case, I think this comes from contracted phonetic of fast or popular speech,
> where there's an intermediate schwa between /h/ and /ng/ to detach the two
> consonnantal phonemes even if the intermediate vowel is not pronounced.
No, you miss the point altogether. The point is that [h] is only found
in English at the beginning of a syllable (an example of it appearing in
the middle of a word is "ahead"), whereas [ng] is only found at the end of
a syllable. Therefore, there can be no minimal pairs contrasting them,
and therefore no formal reason not to assign them to the same phoneme,
dubbed "heng". Of course, this theory is absurd: a triumph of Reason
in the service of pure madness....
HENG WITH HOOK, on the other hand, is a real IPA character representing
a real sound of Swedish: [U+0283] and [x] articulated at the same time.
You can only pronounce this sound, however, if you have the appropriate
gene, alternatively known as _swed_ or _shkh_, so other Swedes have to
use alternative sounds.
-- Where the wombat has walked, John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com> it will inevitably walk again. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
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