Re: (ADPT) Mutable R's

En réponse à Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>:

>
> Yes, I think it is related to both age and region. [r] is definitely not
> very
> common among younger people.
>
Except in Brabant where it's the normal and exclusive pronunciation :) .

>
> I made a mistake. I actually wanted to say: [R\] is used by many people
> as an
> alternative for [r]! In other words: an uvular thrill. Apart from
> Zuid-Hollandse dialecten like Rotterdams and (probably) Haags, this
> thing seems
> to have taken over the role of [r] in the speech of many younger
> people.
> About the situation in Noord-Brabant I can tell you little. I'm sure
> Christophe
> could tell you more.
>
In my ear, the main characteristics of the speech of Noord-Brabant is its
softness. The rhotic is an alveolar trill in all positions, the |g| is
soft /G/, etc... I always associate the [R] and [R\] pronunciations to the
North.

>
> I don't know about Zuid-Holland or Zeeland. But I can tell you for sure
> that
> this sound is common in Het Gooi and in Haarlem ["har\lEm].
>
Yep, it's mostly found in the Randstad (basically Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den
Haag and Utrecht, and the towns around). Sounds extremely posh to me.

> > >[R] sounds very Southern to me.
>
> Yes. Very common in Limburg.
>
Really? I find that extremely strange. To me [R] sounds extremely Northern, and
my first contact with Dutch was in the South. If [R] was common there, I would
have remarked it (after all, it's the French 'r', so I can easily recognise
it). No, to me, the Southern dialects sound nearly Spanish-like to me, with
their use of the alveolar trill (and very rarely the alveolar tap) for the
rhotic.

>
> To be honest, I don't know. In some cases I think something [j]-like can
> be
> detected, although it sounds a lot like children's speech to me. And in
> some
> cases the /r/ is not pronounced at all by some people, a phonemenon
> similar to
> British English.
>
Yep, I hear that around here ;)) .

>
> :)) Yes indeed! Were they also that common before I entered the list
> (now more
> than a year ago)? If not, I guess I should start feeling guilty!
>
Well, I do remember a few discussions on the Dutch |g| before, and on the
multiplicity of the Dutch dialects :) . So you needn't feel guilty :)) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

It takes a straight mind to create a twisted conlang.