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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: How to pronounce Chinese correctly in the Chinese relative NGs.
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Date: Sun, 12 Jan 1997 19:26:08 GMT
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In article <E3tApB.DoA@nonexistent.com>, John Cowan  <cowan@ccil.org> wrote:
>Daniel von Brighoff wrote:
>
>> Personally, I think <h> alone would have sufficed.  In most languages, <h>
>> before <i> is much closer to the actual Chinese sound ([C], the so-called
>> "Ich-Laut" in German) than [S] (which is what less naive speakers
>> substitute for <hs>).  <h> is also the etymological spelling in many
>> cases.

>Admittedly I am not a native speaker of either Chinese or German, but
>I definitely learned to pronounce these sounds differently:  German
>"Ich-Laut" is laterally blocked and with the tongue-tip slightly
>retracted, whereas Chinese "x" has the tongue-tip curled behind the lower
>teeth and is open laterally.  Is this not standard?

	I'm having a little trouble with your description (especially
"laterally blocked" vs. "open laterally"--are you referring to the
position of the tongue in the oral cavity?), but I definitely pronounce
[C] with my tongue-tip pressed against my lower teeth.  When I move my
tongue-tip closer to the gum-line (is this what you mean by "retracted"?)
is becomes closer to [S] and, therefore, to pronunciations of the Ich-Laut
that one hears in the Rhineland, where [C] and [S] are often confused in
speech.

-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
