Re: [groff] Brian Kernighan on the evoution of eqn, pic, grap, into troff

[Colin Watson]

On Sat, May 05, 2018 at 11:35:14AM +0200, Andreas Eder wrote:
> On Sa 05 Mai 2018 at 01:15, Tadziu Hoffmann <address@hidden> wrote:
> > (BTW, most Germans who use it also pronounce it wrong,
> > namely as in "ich" instead of as in "Bach".)
> 
> What do you mean by that? The sound of the 'ch' is the same in both
> cases.

It depends on the dialect, but
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_German_phonology#Ich-Laut_and_ach-Laut
describes the difference in "standard German" - it's essentially about
whether the sound is produced towards the front or back of the mouth.

> 'Andreas ( a german native speaker :-) )

I don't know which dialect you speak; many southern dialects use [x] for
both "ich" and "Bach", rather than [ç] for "ich" and [x] for "Bach".
But as a native English speaker, I can certainly say that there are
aspects of my own language's phonology that weren't obvious to me
without a lot of attention that didn't come automatically!

The Scottish "loch", and hence TeX per Knuth, is indeed pronounced with
the [x] sound.  (In fact, Irish and Scottish Gaelic both have a similar
scheme for pronouncing "ch" as standard German does: if it's surrounded
by front vowels, traditionally called "slender", then it's [ç], while if
it's surrounded by back or "broad" vowels then it's [x].  I don't know
whether the similarity to German is one of common evolution, borrowing,
or just coincidence.)

-- 
Colin Watson                                       address@hidden