| Student
1 to Ghanaian friend |
Can you help me with these two words?
They are different in writing, you see, one is hwñá,
the other hyñá
- but I can't hear the difference. |
| Ghanaian friend |
This one (points to hwñ)means
'to look at', and this one (points to
hyñ)means
'to fix' or 'to wear'. For instance, you would say hwñà
aàtaàaàdeáñá fñàfñá yä "Look at
this nice dress!" But if you say hyñà
aàtaàaàdeáñá fñàfñá yä it means
"Put on this nice dress!" |
| Student 1 |
To me both sound the same. The beginning
sound is like shin share, isn't it? |
| Student 2 |
The word which means 'to look at' is pronounced
with lip rounding, the one which means 'to put on' without lip rounding.
Look and listen! (Produces hwñ
then hyñ,
then repeats it twice.) |
| Student 1 |
Well yes, I tried this, too, but I always
seem to get it wrong. |
| Ghanaian friend |
Try again! |
| Student
1 |
pronounces hwñas
ƒwñ
(w
follows the ƒ). |
| Ghanaian friend |
pronounces ƒçñ
and
repeats it twice. |
| Student 1 |
You see, this is what I thought I said
- I simply don't get it. |
| Student 2 |
You know what? Try to pronounce the two
letters ƒand
w
together - at the same time
rather than one after the other. |
| Student 1 |
pronounces ƒwñ,
then
pronounces ƒçñ
correctly. |
| Ghanaian friend |
Excellent! That sounds like real Akan! |
| Student 2 |
Oh, I simply pronounced it the same way
as I pronounced hyñ,but
I rounded the lips while pronouncing ƒinstead
of pronouncing w
after ƒ.
That's
really simple but newcomers need to be told. |
| Teacher |
You see, there are a number of sounds
in Akan which are just like that. If you look at the way they are written
you tend to get it somehow wrong.
You hear? |
| Student 2 |
Yes, I hear. |
| Student 1 |
What? |
| Student 2 |
Well, it's a bit like whistling. Imitates
tw,
dw with a whistling sound. |
| Teacher |
Now take a word like Twias
in Twi
kasa "Twi language" or Twifoõ"Twi
people". |
| Student
1 |
This is another one I never
seem to get right! |
| Teacher |
Do you have a problem pronouncing
taa,
tie,
tõ? |
| Student
1 |
Pronounces taa,
tie, tõ. This is okay. I don't
seem to have a problem here but… |
| Teacher |
Hm. You see. Now what's the difference
between twa
and twi
if you look at the writing? |
| Student 2 |
Well, it's that whistled w
which
comes between the t and the vowel. |
| Teacher |
Right. Pronounce the t
as
if you were going to whistle, then move the tongue slowly from the palate
towards the front! |
| Student 1 |
(pronounces something like tƒi.) |
| Ghanaian friend |
tči, tči,
tči |
| Student 2 |
Oh, I see it's the same thing as we had
before with hwñ-
while you move the tongue forward you also round the lips, all at the same
time. (Pronounces tči,
tči, tči!) |
| Ghanaian friend |
Ñyñ papaapa!I
think I never heard a European pronounce this word so correctly! |
| Teacher |
Ampa!But
now, there are many words like this. For instance:
It is always the same routine: While you
pronounce the consonant at the beginning of the word, the front part of
the tongue moves forward towards the teeth, at the same time your lips
are being rounded. The linguists call the special effect which comes through
the combination of these two moves labio-palatalisation. Labio-palatalisation
is something very special and very characteristic of the Akan language. |
| Student 1 |
If you had tried to teach me labio-palatalisation
I
would have thought, what's that, I'll never understand it. But this way,
it seems quite natural. I can even hear it when they talk to each other! |
| Teacher |
Now can you read these two words:
|
| Student 1 |
(tries.) |
| Student 2 |
(reads them correctly.) |
| Teacher |
Exactly. nw is
like tw and dw, only
it starts with n. Now there are also words
which have only palatalisation. They are easy to recognise by their written
form because they have y following the consonant,
for instance ky/gy/hy/ny. In pronunciation,
too, they don't have any lip rounding.
Compare palatalisation and labio-palatalisation.
1. Look and listen.
|
| Student 2 |
One thing I still don't understand. Take
kyi
and twi. The first has k
at the beginning, the second t.
But
I don't hear a real difference. |
| Teacher |
You are right. Take kaa
and taa.
kaa is pronounced in the back of the mouth, taa
in
the front, towards the teeth. But ky is pronounced
in the front, just like tw. The position in
the mouth where ky, gy, tw and
dw
are articulated is exactly the same, namely in the front of the
palatal. They are therefore called "pre-palatal consonants" (Dolphyne,
1988: 26 f.). What makes ky and tw
different
is the way in which these two consonants are released.
Listen again to some examples:
The voiced counterparts gy
and
dw differ in exactly the same way between
themselves:
| gyina |
stand (palatalisation) |
| gyae |
go along (palatalisation) |
| gye
di |
believe (palatalisation) |
| dwa |
carve (labio-palatalisation) |
| hye |
burn (palatalisation) |
| hwe |
beat (labio-palatalisation) |
|
| Student 2 |
Are there also consonants which are just
labialised, without being palatalised? |
| Teacher |
Yes, of course. Take for instance a word
which you know very well - kwadu. |
| Student 1 |
Banana. |
| Ghanaian friend |
Kwaàbeànaá,woápñà
kwaàduá? |
| Teacher |
Correct, there are some names, too: Kwaàbeànaá,Kwaàdwoá,Kwaàsä. |
| Student 2 |
Now this Kwa…
sounds
not as unfamiliar too me as the other two kinds of - how did you call it
again - |
| Teacher |
… the various types of release. |
| Student 1 |
Sounds less threatening to me now that
I know what it is. |
| Student 2 |
Okay, what I was going to say, this kwa
sounds
just like the first part of English words like qualm, quandary, quasi.
How does it sound before
i,
e, ñ - something like kwior
kweor
kwøor
perhaps kwñ? |
| Ghanaian friend |
I can't think of any words like that. |
| Student 2 |
May be there are words like kwõ,
kwo, kwu. |
| Ghanaian friend |
No. |
| Teacher |
If you look again at the examples, you
see that ky only occurs before front vowels,
kw
only occurs before a.
But gy
occurs before both. There is
no gw
in
Asante. (cf. Dolphyne1988).
(-> Distribution of consonants) |
| Student 2 |
And the - what are they called again -
tw
and dw? |
| Student 1 |
The labio-palatalised consonants? |
| Teacher |
They combine with all vowels. We have
already seen them with front vowels and with a. Now
they also may be followed by back vowels, for instance
Let's leave this for today. For those who
are interested we will have another session tomorrow where we will talk
about the finer point of the analysis.
As for today, let's keep in mind that there
are three kinds of modified consonants:
| Type of release |
Orthographic representation |
Distribution before vowels |
| Palatalised |
ky, hy
gy, ny |
front vowels only
front vowels and a |
| Labialised |
kw |
before a
only |
| Labio-palatalised |
tw, dw,
hw, nw |
front vowels, a,
back
vowels |
|