On 2008-01-29 22:20, Rick McCallister wrote:
> English /T/ is a rare enough sound --AFAIK only found
> in Europe in English, Icelandic, Faeroese, N. Spanish,
> Albananian and Greek; in Asia in Burmese, Classical
> Arabic; in the Americas in Shawnee and I don't know
> where else.
Here are some more examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_fricative
It isn't very common, but still it's bettwer represented than, let's
say, the voiceless dental bilabially trilled affricate [tB]:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_bilabially_trilled_affricate
Interestingly, phonemic /tB/ seems to occur in Pirahã together with a
bilabial trill [B] (the latter, however, is an allophone of /b/), and
Pirahã has one of the smallest known, really minimalist phonemic
inventories! Everett, who is the main authority on Pirahã, was for some
time unaware of this /tB/, probably because the Pirahã were ashamed to
use it in the presence of a stranger.
Piotr