German has uvular fricatives!

[pne]

Hm, up till now I thought that German /x/ was [x]... but after listening to this page, I'm convinced that it's actually [X] (and that my /r/ is [R], not [G]).

(Also, my attempts at rhotic trills seem to be closer to an [R\] (uvular trill) than to an [r] (alveolar trill). Heh. My trills suck, and I blame my frenulum.)

Comments

Re: [S] vs [C]

[tungol.livejournal.com]

My sister did a 3-month exchange to Worms in her second-last year of high school, and apparently they merge [S] and [C] there. She generally pronounces the same, though she can hear and produce the difference.