Re: OFFLIST Re: question on sampa representation

From: "Roger Mills" <romilly@...>
Subject: Re: OFFLIST Re: question on sampa representation


> Offlist to avoid boring everyone to death........
You'd think so, but I guarantee someone else on the list is following this
thread.

I wrote:
> > It seems like my own speech has also been unaffected by some of these
> > changes.
> Nice to know that one person, at least, agrees with me!!
> Do I recall correctly that you're an Ohioan?? What area?
Certainly not an Ohioan!  I'm originally from New York, not the city.  I'm
actually not sure what sort of AmE I speak.  Growing up, it seemed like
everybody had an accent of one sort or another.  I understand that most
people don't find their own accent/dialect to sound like an accent to them,
simply normal.  I'm not sure I've ever heard English that sounded the way
I'd say it, though some kinds are certainly closer than others.

So where did I learn English?  Good question.  I grew up in a region where
most people sounded like mid-state New Yorkers, Vermont-type New Englanders,
or folks from the City.  My mom's from central Pennsylvania, and her family
all sounds like south-central PA to me, Gettysburg kind of accent and words.
My dad's from Philly and sounds like it.  My mom's parents sound like she
does, but my dad's father sounds like upstate PA and my dad's mother sounds
mostly like Philly, but the Italian shows through.

So what does that leave me with?  You'd think it'd be a mix of all of them,
but I'm getting the impression that it's a Michif type mix.  (Thanks for the
inspiration, Rachel!)

In an inventory of the vowels of my own idiolect, I'm making a contrast
between the vowels of "father" and "got" that seems to be a New England
contrast, I have a central high rounded vowel in "route" that I think is
from Philadelphia, and it looks like I'm distinguishing pretty much every
vowel that anyone distinguishes in America.  Scary, huh?

I started noticing this when teaching some ESL students about the sounds of
English.  Ever since the director/teacher was baffled by all the different
vowels I was using, I decided to prune back what I'm teaching, then slowly
expand it to the full set as students are ready.

And yes, I do distinguish "wh" and "w", I use subjunctive forms, and I use
"whom" in a pretty regular way.

> Re your name-- which you challenged us to place ethnically:  first thought
> Italian, but on second thought, perhaps Polish, and it might even be a
> corrupted or spelling version of Wojtyla (with barred l), the Pope's name,
> [voI't1wa] I think.  There are quite a few (W,V)ojt(u,y)la's in the
Detroit
> area.  Am I close?? :-)
Actually, it's correct the way it's spelled.  Many of the family members who
came here were literate, so it got written down correctly from the start in
this country.  "Fatula" isn't Italian, you're right about that.  It's from
eastern Slovakia, near Kos^ice /koSitsE/.  Now that I'm doing some research
on Slovak, it looks like the dialect our family spoke (and still has bits
and pieces of) is about as weird in Slovak as my own idiolect in English.