I've seen Hungarian <j>, <ly>
described (by Hungarian phoneticians) both as a glide and a fricative. My
impression is that it's a rather narrow approximant, less vocalic than English
<y>, perhaps not as strongly fricative as Swedish /j/, but very similar to
the typical realisations of many other /j/ phonemes throughout Europe. Whatever
the minute details of its articulation, the voiceless allophones of
approximants are quite typically fricative (consider British English /r/ after
voiceless stops).
Hungarian has no /w/ phoneme, and the
voiceless counterpart of /v/ is naturally /f/. In Polish, however, /w/ becomes
voiceless [hW] (the actual IPA character is an upside-down <w>) when it
occurs word-finally after an obstruent or between voiceless obstruents. In
casual speech it can be dropped in those positions.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2002 11:43 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Unvoiced [j]?
Thanks all who replied to this. Just to set the record
straight, for
those who know Hungarian phonetics well, is <j> in
Hungarian a fricative
in any position (in all positions?), other than the
example discussed
where it realized as [ç], a fric. afaik (and is also
unvoiced)?
Is there an unvoiced counterpart to [w]
aswell?
thanks
Harald
On Wed, 4 Sep 2002, Piotr
Gasiorowski wrote:
> Not all fricatives are sibilants. IPA uses the
same symbol [j] for both the
> palatal semivowel and the palatal
fricative (in many languages [j] is
> close enough for some friction to be
audible). It's voiceless
> counetrpart
> is [ç], the sound of German
<ich>. BTW, [pç] is a frequent reflex of old
> palatalised "p" /p'/
in some Polish dialects, also word-finally (where
> /p'/ has fallen
together with /p/ in standard Polish).
>
> Piotr
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Harald Hammarstrom
>
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2002 1:32
AM
> Subject: [tied] Unvoiced [j]?
>
>
> Hi
experts!
> I am beginning to learn Hungarian and this is what my book says
on
> page four:
> "There is however an unvoiced variant of the
voiced fricative (sic)
> j in a special phonetic situation: after unvoiced
consonants at the
> end of a word kapj 'may you have'"
>
> An
unvoiced j??? Is the author confused (I mean afaik <j> in
>
Hungarian is rather an approximant than a sibiland) or does such a
> thing
exist in Hungarian? What does it sound like? kap + whispering j?
>
>
>
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