🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <942f0u$k8v$1@agate.berkeley.edu>,
Adam Jacobs <ajk@socrates.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
>In article <941mol$nbe$1@kemoauc.mips.inka.de>,
>Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de> wrote:
>>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.
>
>Yeah, that was exactly the point I was trying to make in my 
>post: forms like H. "giccs" : G. "Kitsch" are due to variation within
>German itself rather than a supposed k->g process in Hungarian, as the
>original poster (I forget who) hypothesized.
>
>Checking a couple of dictionaries, the primary G. citation form does usually
>seem to be 'gucken.'  For what it's worth, I think I always say Gucker in
>German and kukker in Hungarian, dunno why.
>
>>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.
>
>Well, phonologically speaking the important fact is that there is a two-way
>fortis-lenis distinction.  The exact phonetic identity of the segments
>in question is, for many purposes, less important.
>
>>As you get down further South the distinctive quality that seems
>>to primarily break down is aspiration.
>
>The question is: is the phonological distinction ever actually neutralized?

Originally, probably not.  (I'm not sure when the lenis stops became un-
voiced, but it seems to be fairly early in the history of German.)  After
all, the 2. Lautverschiebung had shifted occurences of initial /p/ to [pf]
over most of the South.  Thus, initial /b/ could vary from fully-voiced to
voiceless unaspirated without neutralisation.

But then came a host of borrowings with initial [p] from Romance, which
were treated like /p/ in some areas and /b/ in others.  I suspect it has
something to do with German being a compromise dialect that it ends up
with a three-way /pf/ vs. /p/ vs. /b/ distinction (phonetically, usually
[pf] vs. [ph] vs. [p], as Mr Weisgerber points out).

(The story is similar for /t/, but very different for /k/, since the
initial /k/ -> [(k)x] shift occurs only in Hoechstalemannisch, a family of
dialects that includes most of those spoken in Switzerland.)

That's why you'll see the variant spellings <Bretzel> ~ <Pretzel>.   This
is originally a southern dialect word.  When it was borrowed into Standard
German, no one could be sure what the proper stop was.

>>How does Hungarian handle aspiration in word-initial stops?
>
>Aspiration is not a distinctive feature in Hungarian and phonetically
>speaking no dialect I've heard aspirates stops in any position to any 
>noticeable degree.
-- 
         Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
        (deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
                                   /____\      gegen die Kunst!