Talk:Hungarian gy

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The pronounciation of Hungarian ty and gy is the same as Latvian ķ [tj] as in kaķis (cat) and ģ [dj] ģenerālis (general).

and many other sounds in other languages. The passage will need changing. (Croatian/Bosnian ć, đ; Albanian q, Gj) Evlekis 21:45, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

It may be present in Latvian or Albanian, but it's certainly different from the Croatian sound: once I talked with a native speaker and it was extremely difficult to me (a Hungarian) to pronounce the name of their past president, Đinđić. The marked sounds are called voiced alveolo-palatal affricate (đ, IPA: /dʑ/) and voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate (ć, IPA: /ʨ/). The Hungarian sounds are named voiceless palatal plosive (ty, IPA: /c/) and voiced palatal plosive (gy, IPA: /ɟ/). These are four different sounds.

There is no need to list the languages that use this sound because it's already present in the articles of the sounds. The article only states that the letter combination "gy" is only used with this sound in Hungarian, which is probably true. I don't know what you want to rewrite: neither Latvian nor Albanian writes the sound in question as "gy". This article is primarily about the letter combination, not the sound. Adam78 22:45, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't going to list the languages, I was going to ammend it because I thought that it was only used this way in Hungarian, and I didn't realise that it was only used this way in Hungarian. I rephrased the sentence which I'm sure you won't mind. But back to your point about Croatian being different. This is a very sticky point. Linguists as non-political individuals aim to provide names to all sounds with even the slightest misplacement of articulation. The point is that the basis of Hungarian "Gy" and "Ty" are intended to represent the same sound as Croatian "Đ" and "Ć". Not being as informed about IPA guides as you are, I know that the association was created to give a grapheme (or two together) per phoneme. Now in the Slavic languages, these are not primary sounds, the Đ originates from a root-D followed by a suffix beginning in /j/, so a girl from Beograd (Belgrade) becomes a Beograd-janka - (Beograđanka), its system is the same in my most familiar language, Macedonian, but the Macedonians tend to pronounce the sound more like the Hungarians do (we'de say Ferihegy like you would), but the thing is Adam, there is no rule neither in Croatian nor Macedonian to suggest what is correct nor what is standard; a significant geographical territory in Macedonia pronounces "ć" like the Croats/Serbs etc. whilst the same letter does move to the back of the mouth in some parts of the old Serbo-Croat dialect zone. Personally, I pronounce mine the same in any language I dare to try and I've never been told I am wrong; the idea is to pronounce the /t/ or the /k/ with your tongue resting along the pallet so as to pronounce a /j/ at the same time thus producing the sound. Those whom you heard teaching you how to say "Đinđić" probably shoved their tongue against their front two teeth without resting the tongue along the pallet and that's why they produced the funny sound. What you have to remember is that if you pronounce /gy/ and the /g/ sounds normally hard and immediately followed by /j/, then what you have actually inadvertently done is pronounced /gi/ rather quickly, because the whole purpose of /j/ (short i) existing as a frictionless consonant is that it is fast/sudden (over before it starts), and its being frictionless allows it to be pronounced along most vowels and produce a different individual sound. My point Adam, is that the sounds we have mentioned, along with Polish ć, Czech T/K+ě, or a plain Ť, or Russian (Cyrillic Tb), or Bulgarian T+y sound) are all based on the same sound, even if the people actually pronounce them a bit differently. When we start giving descriptions as to what a sounds is (post alveolar etc), which may have moved from what it once was, then we disenfranchise many who are still using its original form before yielding. Evlekis 10:22, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed answer. Just brief answers, if you don't mind:

• I won't argue in South Slavic dialectal matters since I don't know anything about them; I only mentioned my personal experience (and some other Wikipedia articles). I don't remember how he exactly formed this sound.
• I don't know if you pronounce this sound correctly in Hungarian; I'd have to listen to you so as to determine.
• One more point to note: assimilation may take place differently in different languages; it's not as universal as one might assume. (For example, it's natural for us and for speakers of many other languages that if "n" + "g" follow each other, the "n" will become "ŋ", but it's not true for Russian, however obvious it sounds.)
• However, I don't know what sense this present version makes: "This is the only way it is used in Hungarian." Do you mean we don't ever write this sound differently in Hungarian? Sorry, I don't understand... Adam78 12:49, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, you're free to revert back to the original, I won't mind. What I was trying to say is that the gy combination only produces that specific sound and no other; the original could have been interpreted as the sound only existing in Hungarian, infact it was that very notion which caused an unnamed editor to leave the opening statement on this talk page. I suppose I could reword it so that it is totally clear. You're right about the assimilation being different from one language to the next, especially where this "ng/ŋ" occurs. Saying that, I'm sure my way of pronouncing Hungarian is all right, I don't actually speak very much at all but I'm familiar with the photenics. Evlekis 13:47, 8 May 2007 (UTC)