Palatal n

[Luis Gonzalez-Reimann]

Actually, the English word canyon is a particularly good illustration, as it
comes from Spanish cañón (in Spanish the accent falls on the o, but English
shifts it to the a). Because English does not have the ñ (palatal nasal), 'ny'
was adopted as the best approximation to the sound of ñ. 
So, for English speakers 'ny' is as close as it gets when trying to describe
the ñ sound in writing (without using phonetical explanations).

(By the way, ñ is ASCII character 164, so PCs can write it in any font)

Regards,


Luis González-Reimann
_______________


At 02:07 PM 06/04/2003 +1000, you wrote:
>Dear Friends
>
>Can anyone help me with a simply pronunciation inquiry? What is the
>justification for pronouncing the palatal n (i.e. n~) as `ny'? Some primers
>say it is like the `ny' in `canyon' but I cannot understand where the `y'
>comes in.
>
>Many thanks in advance.
>
>Yours
>
>McComas
>