Re: Ashamed of [T]? (fy: /T/ -> /t_d/?)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jan van Steenbergen" <ijzeren_jan@...>


> --- Mark J. Reed skrzypszy:
>
>> I only added that as an aside in my post, whose primary purpose
>> was to ask why some Germans are "ashamed" to say [T]. Feeling
>> ashamed about producing a phone just strikes me as odd.  I still
>> don't understand it.
>
> In Dutch, [T] can only be heard in the speech of people with a speech
> defect. And I think that's the answer to your question. Even though
> the effect is not the same when Dutch people speak English, many of
> them are hesitant to use it even there. It's like the fear to get
> undressed before entering a sauna, even if you know that all the
> others are undressed, too. ;)
>
> Likewise, certain sounds only exist in certain dialects (which are
> often looked down upon by the speakers of the "standard" language),
> and they are likely to produce the same effect.
>
> Jan
I'm not sure I'd call it "shame"; perhaps discomfort?  I'll admit to feeling
a little silly pronouncing Spanish the Castillian way.  Cerveza and zapato
make me feel as though I'm lisping, and having grown up with Mexican
Spanish, it's extra work for me to remember what is an "s" and what isn't.
When I was in Geneva, I used to speak to one of the local shop owners who
didn't know much English.  She was trying to thank me in English, and it was
Tenk you.  She wanted instruction, so I told her to put her tongue between
the tips of her upper and lower front teeth and hiss.  She burst into
uncontrollable laughter.  I couldn't get her to make the sound, she was so
distracted by the silliness of it.  So I guess I can relate to Dutch and
German discomfort!  I've produced similar hilarity in students I'm trying to
teach the Welsh lateral fricative to.  But [T], I think, has more negative
charge in many cultures.

Heh heh, this reminds me of something funny:  my mother once insisted on
pronouncing Shakespeare's Othello as /o'tElo/, because she was all enthused
about Verdi's opera Otello.  It's not that she didn't think we were
performing in Shakespeare's play, she was convinced that Shakespeare
himself, like Verdi, pronounced it Otello.  (She might have been right; how
do we know how Shakespeare pronounced it?)  But I remember being
excrutiatingly embarrassed when one of my fellow actors came over to my
house and Mom said, "So, I understand you are Iago in Otello."  "It's
Othello, Mom," under my breath.  Ignoring me: "I've always thought Otello
was one of Shakespeare's greatest plays..."

Mother is an artist, a singer, an autodidact, a voracious reader and a
formidable woman, and that was about thirty years ago.  But I wonder if the
"th" thingie was operant there?  [t] was clearly culturally superior to our
plain old English [T] in this one word "Othello" so she "elevated" it.  :)
:)

Sally

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