From: "Trebor Jung" <treborjung@...>

> Danny wrote:
>
> "What was your first? For me it was Georgian, which has p>, t>, ts>, tS>,
> k>, k>w, q> and q>w (one dialect, or one in another Kartvelian language,
> might also have a palatized version of ts>, but I don't know for sure).
>
> I didn't know Georgian had labialized consonants... Do you mean Abkhaz?

It depends on how you interpret the phonology. Orthodoxically, Georgian
doesn't have labialized consoants, and /v/ is considered a separate phoneme.
But /v/ becomes [w] after consonants, and it is very common after velars and
uvulars. Also, Georgian has a whole set of harmonic clusters involving a
labial or alveolar stop, or alveolar or postalveolar affricate, followed by
a velar or uvular stop with the same voicing-ejectivity status; this cluster
can also be followed by /v/, which again has the value of [w].

(Read Chapter 46 of _Phonologies of Asia and Africa: Vol. 1 and 2, Alan S.
Kaye, editor, for more info, or better yet, go here:
http://www.rosettaproject.org/live/search/showpages?ethnocode=GEO&doctype=phon&scale=six&version=1&allpages=1.)

> "We had a native Korean speaker on the list years ago, and I can't
remember
> her name, but she said something about these being pronounced with glottal
> tension but not ejectivity, and that these consonants may also be voiced.
>
> How would those consonants be transcribed in X-SAMPA? Also, where does
> Hausa's 'glottal y' come from, and how would it be transcribed? Do any
other
> languages have that sound?

I usually see the consonant followed by an apostrophe in phonetic
transliterations of Korean. But that normally indicates ejectivity. For
Hausa <'y>, I believe it's /j_?/

> "Cantonese and Taiwanese (as do Sino-Korean and Sino-Japanese/On) keep the
> old syllable-final stops, all lost in Mandarin; syllable-final /m/ is also
> preserved, not converted to /n/ as in Mandarin."
>
> What are Sino-Japanese and Sino-Korean?

Words in Japanese and Korean that came from Chinese. In Japanese, kanji
(Chinese characters) have two readings, kun (native Japanese word) and on
(Sino-Japanese).