Another example could be the Danish contrast between the alveolar
fricative/approximant allophone of /d/ and lateral /l/, as in the pair
måde "manner" versus måle "measure (vb)" or
bude "messengers" versus bule "bump"
for instance.
When I was a linguistics student, one my classmates took on the task of working
out the phonology of Danish for an assignment for her Phonetics course. She had
great difficulty with the contrast and consistently transcribed l for the
so-called 'soft d'.
Anne
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Dr. Anne Fabricius
Associate Professor of English Language
Department of Language and Culture
Roskilde University
Postboks 260
DK-4000 Denmark
Phone: +45 4674 2378 (work)
+45 4821 2877 (home)
+45 6167 2877 (mobile)
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