Turniansky, Michael [UNK] schrieb:
Martin: -----Original Message-----Now there's a whole bunch of xr words: xrabo Arabic xrani injure xriso Christian xruba buckwheat xruki turkey xrula flower xruti returnI find {xr} hard to pronounce (even though I've a German palate, too).I dunno. I find it rather easy, but then I had a moderate exposure to Hebrew and Yiddish in my formative years, in addition to my native English (Spanish wasn't until later, ca. age 12-16). I tend to pronounce the combination as (I think, I'm no phonologist) a voiceless uvular fricative (which is probably not a technically legalpronunciation of the lojbanic x)
Both the ich (a whispered yod) and the ach sound are valid, as far as I know
transforming to a alveolar trill.
You could always add a buffer sound if you find it too difficult,
of course.
The ich sound (which may be what Martin tries to use) needs awkward tongue repositioning in the neighborhood of either r variant - but for my German ear, at least, the distinction of the sounds is much clearer (different places of articulation, no overlap in the time domain possible) with the ich sound.
If you use uvular fricatives for both sounds, xr becomes as easy as saying "months" with the dorsal s variant (a problem at least for German learners).
klaus