rhotic miscellany, and a usage note

J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
> > --- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> skrev:
> >> That was the /r/ used by Hitler, as you hear on
> >> ancient newsreels. It may be - I don't know - that
> >> this accounts for its  demise in the last half
> >> century.
>
> As I've said, I think the accent used in these ancient newsreels was just
> the standard media accent of that time, for nazis as well as for
> communists
> or democrats. We just happen to hear more nazi newsreels than other ones
> (which is sad if you think about it).
Hitler was Austrian IIRC and began his political rise in Bavaria. Is the
trilled r possibly a southern feature?
>
OTOH Marlene Dietrich, almost his contemporary (and much nicer to listen
to), had the uvular fric. r, often parodied by English speakers who hear it
as closest to our [w].

OTTH, I'm now listening to my Lotte Lenya/Brecht/Weill CD, and she has a
most amazing mixture of pronunciation:

--a trilled alveolar [r] seems to predominate, especially in emphasized
words, word final, in clusters like ...tr..., gr...; perhaps this is "stage
German".

--almost an American /r/ in final position in unstressed words like der,
einer, though it's possible it's uvular and doesn't come thru the recording
process well. The first word of "Cäsars Tod"-- Rom -- sounds very American.
If these songs were recorded in the 50s, it may be she'd acquired a bit of
an American accent after 20+ years here.
========================
I really don't like to do this, but it seems to be in vogue to correct our
foreign friends' usages.  J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:

>but it is remarkable that somebody
can so totally acquire a foreign language that even native speakers of the
same region are cheated!>

"Cheated" is not quite right, and too strong in any case-- "fooled" (not
malicious) or "deceived" (possibly malicious) would be more appropriate.
"Cheat" connotes deceiving with illicit or dishonest means and motives--
cheat at cards, cheat on an exam, cheat in an election (did I say that???),
cheat s.o. out of his money.

Reply