Talk:healh

Pronunciation

@Hazarasp, I'm confused. You agree that the pronunciation /xæ͜ɑlx/ is incorrect, so why have you restored it to the entry? Zacwill (talk) 15:46, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

While it's a incorrect representation of the precise pronunciation, it was never meant to be that. Instead, it's mean to represent underlying phonemic representation of the word, which has /x/ as [h] is not a distinct phoneme in Old English, but a positional variant of /x/ that appears syllable-initially. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 05:00, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm not a linguist, so perhaps for my benefit you could expand on this. Who's to say that /x/ is the phoneme and [h] is the positional variant? Couldn't you just as easily claim that [x] is a positional variant of the phoneme /h/? That said, either assumption leaves you with a transcription that isn't much use to anyone who isn't a native speaker of Old English, and no such speakers exist. Zacwill (talk) 16:16, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

One could analyse OE as having underlying /h/ rather than /x/, but taking [x] as underlying is arguably preferable since the phoneme derives from PGmc. /x/ (itself from the lenition of PIE ḱ k). I also don't concur with your ipse dixit statement that a phonemic transcription "isn't much use to anyone who isn't a native speaker of Old English"; plenty of linguists would have good reason to disagree, especially the exact distribution of OE phonemes' allophones isn't particularly certain. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 01:58, 14 November 2022 (UTC)