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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: German and French uvular 'r'
In-Reply-To: millert@grad.csee.usf.edu's message of 16 Nov 1994 05:05:00 GMT
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Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 21:02:43 GMT
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In article <3ac3ts$oi1@mother.usf.edu> millert@grad.csee.usf.edu
(Timothy Miller) writes:

>BTW, what does the word 'approximant' actually mean?  I know how to use it and
>what does it refers to, but what does the word come from.  Does it mean that
>it's approximating a vowel or something?

It means that the speech organs approach each other without ever coming in
contact, and generally without approaching close enough for frication to take
place.  If you didn't know this, you didn't really know how to use it...
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
