Philippe Verdy scripsit: > Which words? "hungry", "hunger", "Hungary", "Henry" ? I don't know a > syllable-initial /h/ in English out of word-initial /h/... And even in that > case, I think this comes from contracted phonetic of fast or popular speech, > where there's an intermediate schwa between /h/ and /ng/ to detach the two > consonnantal phonemes even if the intermediate vowel is not pronounced.
No, you miss the point altogether. The point is that [h] is only found in English at the beginning of a syllable (an example of it appearing in the middle of a word is "ahead"), whereas [ng] is only found at the end of a syllable. Therefore, there can be no minimal pairs contrasting them, and therefore no formal reason not to assign them to the same phoneme, dubbed "heng". Of course, this theory is absurd: a triumph of Reason in the service of pure madness.... HENG WITH HOOK, on the other hand, is a real IPA character representing a real sound of Swedish: [U+0283] and [x] articulated at the same time. You can only pronounce this sound, however, if you have the appropriate gene, alternatively known as _swed_ or _shkh_, so other Swedes have to use alternative sounds. -- Where the wombat has walked, John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> it will inevitably walk again. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
