Re: Obsessed with Mouth Noises

On Saturday, April 10, 2004, at 04:14 AM, Tim May wrote:

> Gary Shannon wrote at 2004-04-09 18:02:14 (-0700)
[snip]
>> Two people walk into a restaurant.  One orders "frahd chikin pleez"
>> and the other orders "vroit jigun pliss" and the both get the same
I doubt _very_ much whether "vroit jigun pliss" would be readily
understood everywhere in the anglophone world. One gets used to variants
like these if they are not uncommon in one's own neck of the woods. But
they can be - and are - virtually incomprehensible in others where
different variations are the norm.

> As well might you ask why syntax of interest is when Yoda audiences
> can understand, hmmm?
Quite so - in colloquial English in different regions one often comes
across strange departures from usual syntax yet communication is achieved
_within those regions_.

> Pronunciation nearly irrelevant to communication?  Obviously untrue.
Yes, I agree. My students come from a wide range of ethnic & cultural
backgrounds. I usually have no difficulty understanding them as they
generally have acquired some variant of south-west London accent (tho
Afro-Carribean students carry over quite a bit of Carribean mixed in with
SW-London - but that's no problem). But the English pronunciations of some
of their parents is very difficult to follow, especially some of those
from the Indian subcontinent.

I remember years ago when I was doing my master's degree in Computing,
trying to help a Sri-Lankan student and realizing that something was going
wrong. The problem was that I heard her "symbol" as "simple"!

My daughter-in-law is French. She was taught RP English. When she moved to
Newport in South Wales, where she now lives, she found it difficult at
first to understand many of the locals. Now she has no problem. But when
we went on holiday two years back to Dorset, she found the local English
of shop-keepers etc difficult to follow - another regional accent!

Even I as a native English speaker do not readily understand all regional
accents in the UK. We southerners tend to find Geordie (NE England) and
some Lowlands Scots varieties quite tricky. During the times of the
"Troubles" in Northern Ireland, I remember sometimes when a local person
was interviewed my wife & I would turn to one another and say: "What did
he say?" We'd hardly understood a word. Pronunciation is relevant.

A final anecdote: my father-in-law is a native born English speaker but,
for some reason, tends to pronounce 'quiche' as /gi:S/.  About two years
back a surreal conversation occurred when he was placing an order shortly
before Christmas. While he was talking about 'quiche', the shopkeeper
though he was talking about 'geese' and was responding accordingly!

Sorry - IME pronunciation is very relevant to effective communication.

> without preventing communication.  What constitutes a "trivial nuance"
> is not a simple matter, and is language dependant.
Quite so. Whether you pronounce Welsh |ch| as [x] instead of the standard
[X], you will be understood. But make the same mistake in Innuit, you'd be
pronouncing a different word and, therefore, conveying the wrong meaning.

> Every distinction
> made in the letters of the IPA means the difference between one word
> and another in at least one language.
Yep.

Besides, phonology is interesting  :))

BTW - the subject line is a little strange IMO. It seems to suggest that
the problem is _mouth_ noises and that it noises made by other parts of
the body that ought to be our concern.

Ray
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