Re: CHAT: affricates/grammar help/intransitivity/free word order

Pascal A. Kramm and me wrote alternately:

>>>The Duden variety has also lots of features which are definitely not
>>>found in most varieties of Standard German.
>>
>>The pronunciation? That's new to me. Could you give some examples?
>
>Just take the "new spelling". Most people will e.g. pronounce "Gemse" as
>/gemz@/ (or /jemz@/ in some varieties), but not as /g&mse/, as they would
>have to according to the new spelling.
As I've pointed out many times, this feature is a peculiarity of your local
pronunciation (and of some varieties of old-fashioned Swiss standard
German). If you can prove me that most people pronounce it that way, I will
instantly believe you. Unless you do so, however, I will believe what I've
read about German phonology (by far not only in the Duden) and my own
experience. Don't return the burden of proof on me, since it's you who is
claiming that virtually every linguist who describes the use of German is wrong.

You still haven't showed me a single instance from the "lots of features of
the Duden variety which are definitly not found in most varieties of
standard German".


>>>>The prescriptive standard, that is, the variety of standard German that
>>>>is teached abroad, equals the Duden variety, and it is very differnt
>>>>from Pascal Kramms local variety. He seems to be stuck in the out of
>>>>date point of view that there's only one pronunciation of standard
>>>>German, and for a reason I can't figure he assumes that his own
>>>>pronunciation (which is very peculiar) is that only pronuciation of
>>>>standard German, which is definitly wrong.
>>>
>>>I never said anything like that, don't make it appear as if I did.
I've had a look at some older messages and I've found two instances where
you've very emphatically claimed your local pronunciations to be that only
pronunciation of standard German:

You've made the false claim that *standard German* distinguishes short /e/
and /&/:
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0410A&L=conlang&P=R16699

You've made the false claim that the *standard German* pronunciation of
_-üß_ is always /Ys/:
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0412C&L=conlang&P=9729

Both claims can easily be proved wrong by looking at any description of the
German vowel system. And as I've said above, don't return the burden of
proof on me, since it's you who is claiming that virtually every linguist
who describes the use of German is wrong.


By the way, if you backtrack the discussion lines, you will see that in the
first mentionings of either feature, you have not said explicitly that you
were talking about standard German:

You first claimed that German has /&/ on the footnotes of your own page:
http://www.choton.org/pronunciation.html

You first claimed that the German pronunciation of _-üß_ was always /Ys/ in
the following message:
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0412C&L=conlang&P=2526

In neither case you've said that you were talking about standard German.
Therefore, according to the reason you've pointed out emphatically in the
last post, people should have assumed that you were talking about your local
variety of standard German:

>>If you're making a statement on German pronunciation without specifying
>>where this pronunciation is used, people will assume you're talking about
>>the standard pronunciation unless they know German very well.
>
>Well, that is rather an assumption on your part, that most people would
>think I was talking about the prescriptive standard.
>I'd say the exact opposite is probably true: if someone is speaking about
>pronunciation, he is probably speaking about the pronunciation he actually
>uses, and not about some prescriptive standard which he (and most others)
>*don't* use.
>So, unless someone said that he is actually speaking about the less used
>prescriptive standard, I would say that he is rather talking about *his*
>pronunciation.
>So, unless someone said that he is actually speaking about the less used
>prescriptive standard, I would say that he is rather talking about *his*
>pronunciation.
In spite of this idea of yours, the statements you made on German
pronunciation without specifying where this pronunciation was used turned
out to be really about the standard pronunciation and not about your local
dialect. This proves that the assumption on my part was right.

Anyway, I'd recommend say explicitly what variety of standard German you're
talking about in each case, so that people aren't forced to make their own
guesses based on any kind of assumptions. However, when you don't specify
what variety you're talking about, the safest guess is that you're talking
about the standard variety, as I've just shown.

gru:s
j. m. w.

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