Talk:Afrikaans phonology

Pronunciation of long A ("aa") and of G
I've got a handful of questions/observations.

1) I've never heard Afrikaans long A (as in kaart) realized as /aː/ but always as a very distinctive back vowel, namely [ɑː]. Is /a:/ chosen because of historical reasons or because it is easier to write than the symbol 〈ɑ〉? I know that in many languages /r/ is usually chosen as standard over the actual [ʁ] or [ɹ] for simplicity.

2) From what I've heard, the 〈g〉 is usually pronounced as the voiceless uvular fricative /χ/. In fact, that page even lists Afrikaans as one of the languages that has the sound, namely goed pronounced as [χut], whereas in this article, goed is transcribed as /xut/.

I understand the difference between the /.../ and [...] notation but I find it almost painfully wrong that the softer G variant here is referred to as the sound /ç/, rather than choosing /χ/ and /x/. Is /ç/ and /x/ the actual standard (sort of like English RP, if you will), historical or just because people are more used to the /x/ and /ç/ symbols?

I noticed that the "ch" sound of Swiss German is referred to as "always [x], or in many dialects even [χ]" and as a native speaker of Zürich German (the dialect that probably has the most uvular pronunciation of "ch" of all Swiss regions) I can assure you that the Afrikaans pronunciation of 〈g〉 is even more in the back, so this opposition confuses me.

3) Some information on when 〈g〉 is pronounced as /g/ as opposed to the usual fricative would be very interesting. This article lists the pronunciation of sorge as [ˈsɔrɡə] and I know that Dutch zorgen is pronounced something like /'zɔrɣə/. So this would be an interesting opposition to Dutch and an interesting fact to know in general. 84.75.9.162 (talk) 19:02, 5 February 2014 (UTC) (lKj)
 * 1. "Is chosen because of historical reasons or because it is easier to write than the symbol 〈〉?" Maybe. Either way, that's how Donaldson writes it.
 * 2a. "Is and  the actual standard (sort of like English RP, if you will), historical or just because people are more used to the  and  symbols?" I don't know, that's how Donaldson writes it.
 * 2b. "I can assure you that the Afrikaans pronunciation of 〈g〉 is even more in the back, so this opposition confuses me." There's no in Afrikaans, therefore there is no opposition that you're talking about.
 * 3. The only thing I know about is that it's an occasional allophone of . Peter238 (talk) 21:54, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

This page needs attention
The vowel section is seriously lacking. Other phonology articles have diagrams of vowel targets, often in table form; this one needs something like that rather than just a list—especially because it's a list of phones, not phonemes. I see that some allophones are noted as such, but it looks to me like at least /iː/, /uː/, and /yː/ are also allophones, as they precede /r/ in their example words. I am not knowledgeable on the subject of Afrikaans phonology, and reading this page in its current form doesn't change that. (suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ) nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 19:40, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It's not as simple as saying that the page needs a diagram of vowel targets. We need sources for such things. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10118063.1993.9723910 could be used to make a formant chart. If someone has access to it (or is able to pay for it - it's pretty expensive), go for it. Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 13:13, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

"suutjies"
I'm sure the transcription of "suutjies" is quite wrong - it ought to be something more like ['sykis]. I'm not sure enough about the rightness of my transcription though to change it to that, but it should certainly be changed from what it is! 195.171.114.69 (talk) 11:45, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Done. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 21:52, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Afrikaans EU sound
What is the best way to transcribe it on wiktionary for example? In the recordings I heard on forvo the variant of Donaldson [øə] is the most obvious one. Should it be mentioned here as the main variant? https://forvo.com/word/deur/#af https://forvo.com/word/neus/#af https://forvo.com/word/seun/#af https://forvo.com/word/beursie/#af 85.30.49.168 (talk) 00:15, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * All of these sound like or even, not , so our transcription  is the most correct one. Mr KEBAB (talk) 14:20, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
 * On second thought, deur does sound somewhat more like, but that's probably just a positional allophone before . Mr KEBAB (talk) 14:22, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Update: I changed the transcription to per Lass and de Villiers - see . Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:43, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Vowel charts
A couple of days ago I added a monophthong chart to the article. The source is extremely old, but the monophthong chart that it has looks fairly accurate even for modern standard Afrikaans. I didn't include the 'close-mid monophthongs', as these are often in modern standard Afrikaans, i.e. diphthongs.

However, I advise against using their diphthong chart, as, first of all, it doesn't include, the diphthong is transcribed $⟨⟩$ and has too central an ending point (as if it were , and it's not - in modern standard Afrikaans it is , with an unrounded second element), whereas  is shown as its outdated counterpart. Mr KEBAB (talk) 16:17, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I've just replaced that vowel chart with a much more recent one. Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:30, 17 April 2017 (UTC)