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

From:Sally Caves <scaves@...>
Date:Sunday, October 31, 2004, 13:54
----- 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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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>