Re: [tied] Re: Other IE language with /w/

On Pet, listopad 14, 2005 2:30 am, Richard Wordingham reče:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...> wrote:
>
>> -- this is what Sanskrit is supposed to have had and what modern
> Hindi, Panjabi, Gujarati, etc. have (though with velar
> co-articulation), even though the many times I have heard the Indian
> labio-dental approximant, and I have listened carefully and intently
> with the intention of testing what I have read in books, I would still
> swear that they use two allophones, a rounded one before rounded
> vowels and perhaps back vowels, and a labiodental one before other
> vowels, which are indistinguishable from /w/ in the former case and
> /v/ in the latter case, to my ear at least.
>
> That is entirely plausible. Thai is supposed to have the same
> variation, but there's so much variation it's a statistical difference
> rather than a pedictable allophone difference overall.

Again, it's the same in my native language. We also use labio-dental
approximative which has /w/ as its allophone in he beginning of the word
in front of /u/ and /o/, and at the end of the word (where it closely
resembles /w/ but is not quite real /w/ but something inbetween). Also,
/w/ is used in non-monitored, spontaneous speech, if one is careful at
pronouncing, approximative is again used whereever.
I guess this kind of thing is not unusual.

Mate