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Talk:Araki language

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Ridiculous claims under "consonants"

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Only fluent speakers of Araki are able to distinguish between the flap [ɾ] and the trill [r]; and only they can pronounce - or even hear properly - the linguolabial consonants. 'Passive' users of the language replace these consonants either with bilabial consonants or with alveolar consonants. Although many younger people claim to be able to speak Araki, they are usually in fact these ‘passive’ users of the language, and cannot produce linguolabial/apicolabial consonants.

This is completely ridiculous. Several languages, including the widely-spoken Spanish language, have a phonemic contrast between [ɾ] and [r], and even for speakers of languages that don't contrast the two, the two consonants sound very different. That is, unless [r] normally only has one contact, in which case it would be better to say that instead of that "only fluent speakers of Araki are able to distinguish between [them]". Secondly, linguolabial consonants are very easy to pronounce if you know how they are articulated - with the tongue against the upper lip. Producing them is not a hard thing. And I'm sure that with enough training, most people would be able to distinguish between [p] and [t̼]. If there is any evidence against this, it should be cited. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zgialor (talkcontribs) 00:51, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You're right. I think it basically is supposed to say that passive speakers do distinguish between those sounds, but by completely going over the top. Please, go ahead and change it. I've gone ahead and fixed it. --JorisvS (talk) 08:29, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]