Miguel's stubbornness goes too far:
>>http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/LingWWW/LIN325/Notes04/Consonants.pdf
>>
>>Check out its dental /r/.
>
> Nonsense. Semitic /r/ is alveolar.
If you're going to reject the University of Washington on this,
can you at least have the decency to substantiate that with
a lengthy essay?
>>Might wanna double-check Russian
>
> Russian /r/ is alveolar. Only palatalized /r'/ tends to be
> dental.
Whatever, the point is I'm correct and it DOES exist in this
case.
> Dentals trills are extremely rare, for simple articulatory
> reasons.
Alright, I can accept that, although my tongue must be pretty
gifted because I have no difficulty but then I can pronounce
ejectives easily too and it's always funny getting a friend to
try it.
> Flaps/taps might be more common, at least they are
> easier to make, but they are also overwhelmingly alveolar.
I don't buy that.
> Semitic /r/ is rolled, and thus surely alveolar.
What proof that Semitic *r wasn't tapped? I don't even
know of evidence showing clearly why IE *r couldn't have
been tapped even. Good luck on that one.
>> In French, everything is dental, including /s/.
>
> No it isn't. /t/ and /d/ are dental, /s/ /z/ /l/ (and
> formerly /r/) are alveolar.
Now you've pissed me off. Ain't nobody saying nothin'
bad about ma' French, no ma'am!
Pretty funny as how I'm pronouncing [s] differently in English
than I am in French, eh? Pretty funny considering that my
mother tongue is in fact English. What would I know. I'm from
Winnipeg where there's a rather large French community and
I went to French Immersion from Kindergarten onward. Why did I
start using dental sibilants when I don't use them in English?
And funny how people tell me how well I pronounce French and how
I had been rated the same as francophones when I briefly worked
for Air Canada for online reservations.
So I went on a hunt for French phonology on Google...
http://qsilver.queensu.ca/french/Cours/215/chap2.html
Look, Miguel, the above site which is ironically IN FRENCH,
says clearly "Dans le cas du [s], L'APEX DE LA LANGUE (!!!)
s'approche des DENTS (!!!) supérieures". My pronunciation
agrees with what is on the site concerning sibilants and
since it's from Queens University in Toronto, a hop-skip-n-
jump from Quebec, I'm betting that they know what they're
talking about and you full of [...]
The alveolar you're speaking of is the "ch" in "chose" or
the "j" in "jambe". If you had said [S] is alveolar, I'd
have supported you. So you're flatly wrong. Afaik, it's
the same for European and Canadian French.
And I'm suspecting the Romanians on this list might add
something to this. Any Romanians listening? Alex? How do
you pronounce [s] in your language?
Also there are many instances of dental affricates as my
favourite Mandarin word 'cao4' that my friend always uses to
describe things :) Surprisingly, he infuses it within a
word like an infix just like in English! But that's another
sorted linguistic tale...
BACK TO THE TOPIC:
This all just validates the point that what I'm saying can
work: An allophony of [s] with a disappearing alveolar [S]
after dental *r (flap), *n and *l or palatal *y in IndoEuropean.
= gLeN