🚀 go-pugleaf

Adam Jacobs <ajk@socrates.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:

> It also goes the other way, viz. kukker "(type of optical instrument)" :-)
> < "Gucker", though "gukker" is probably as common.

"gucken" and "kucken" are both in use in Germany.  Opinions which
form is more standard vary.  Dictionaries admit both.  As usual,
attempts in de.etc.sprache.misc to determine the regional distribution
have failed.

> If you look at the German section of the fourth volume of TESz, an index
> of words categorized by source language, you can find many other examples
> of word-initial g-k, not to mention b-p (Buss-puszi) and d-t (Dusch-tus)
> disparities in German loanwords -- and many, many more examples in which 
> there is no such ambiguity.  No systematic correspondence, unlike the
> Russian /g/-for-/h/ thing. It's because (1) German has a lot of dialectal
> variation (a great deal more than Hungarian does!), (2) voiced-unvoiced
> alternation is characteristic between many of these dialects,

For word-initial stops, Northern/Standard German pronunciation
makes a two-way distinction between {voiceless, aspirated} /p/,
/t/, /k/ and {voiced, unaspirated} /b/, /d/, /g/.  Actually I think
there is some dispute whether voicing enters the picture at all,
with "lax" and "tense" also being quoted as distinctions, whatever
qualities these are supposed to refer to.

As you get down further South the distinctive quality that seems
to primarily break down is aspiration.

How does Hungarian handle aspiration in word-initial stops?

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de