Re: OT: Afrikaans

Christophe a écrit...

> Heard in some Dutch dialects too :)) .
> They do, in dialects.
> Here again, a phonetic change frequent in Dutch dialects.
Very interesting! As all my experience with Dutch comes from
textbooks and the BVN satellite TV channel, I know nothing at
all about Dutch dialects. How fascinating that many of the
differences between Afrikaans and Dutch are present in Dutch
dialects. I wonder if there are particular dialects in Dutch
which exhibit all these features, or whether they are scattered
about? If the former, that might point to the area of the
Netherlands where the colonists who went to Africa originally
came from?

> > the diphthong written ui is something like /{y/ in Dutch (at
> >least that's how it sounds to me),
> You have a strange ear. In Dutch the most common pronunciation
is /9Y/,
> both elements fully rounded, although the second almost tends
to unrounding
> (but certainly not the first).
That is odd. I have no phonetic training whatsoever, so I could
be hearing it completely wrong, but then people always tell me
that I have a gift for mimicry, and native speakers of languages
I study always praise me for my accent, so I've always thought I
had a good ear. When I hear [ui], the first element stands out
as unrounded, a definite /{/ or maybe very open /E/. And I
definitely hear the rounding (roundedness?) of the second
element. Of course, what I have heard consists of the cassette
recordings which accompany textbooks and television broadcasts,
so that may well not be reflective of everyday colloquial
pronunciation.

> >  whereas in Afrikaans both
> >elements are fully rounded, /2y/ or something close.
> That's how Dutch pronounces "eu".
Ah, you have comfirmed my suspicion! Textbooks of Dutch always
say that [eu] is /2/, a pure vowel, but it always sounded
diphthongised to me. I was never sure if I was "hearing things",
or if I heard it right and the textbooks were wrong (or
hypercorrecting).

> >Afrikaans writes as y the diphthong which Dutch writes as ij.
> Common in older orthography of Dutch, and still present in
some names.

Really? Why the heck did they switch, then? pages full of y's
are so much more attractive than pages full of ij's. :)

> >No, [g] is /x/ in Afrikaans (as is [ch]).
> Really? My South-African colleagues definitely pronounced [g].
Odd. All I can say is that that goes against what every textbook
and dictionary of Afrikaans I've seen says. They all say that
Afrikaans [g] is identical in pronunciation to [ch], both being
pronounced /x/. /g/ does exist, written [gh], but is restricted
to a few loanwords, such as "gholf".

And drat it, I just realised I've been using [] for written
notation, when it's something else I've forgotten; [] is
supposed to be for phonetic representation, right? I just asked
about this a week or two ago, too. Dammit, I've got a memory
like a sieve. :(

> Here again, my experience with my South-African colleagues
tells something
> completely different. Would Afrikaans have dialects?
I would expect so. Don't all languages exhibit some regional
variation? But as I don't personally know any Afrikaners, all my
experience with the language comes from textbooks, tapes, and
ditionaries, which would (I assume) use a standard ABN sort of
Afrikaans, if such a thing exists.

Thomas

Replies