Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)

Joseph Fatula wrote:

>From: "Tristan" <kesuari@...>
>Subject: Re: retroflex consonants
>
>
>>So explain to me why it was easier to tell the difference between the
>>/8u/ in /st8ul/ and /st8un/ than the /T/ and /D/ in this and thin? ...
>>
>>
>I'd like to tell you, but I have no idea what words those are.  Is the
>second one "stone", perhaps?
>
Yes, and the first 'stole'. (To me, they're pronounced more like [stOul]
and [st8un], though some broader Australian accents have [stOu] and/or
[staun] or [st6un] or something ('cow' is something like [k_h&u] here,
so there's no problem of us not understanding ourselves).)

>This illustrates something I've noticed with English that few people seem to
>agree with, so I'll mention it here.  The discrepancies between spoken and
>written English have gotten pretty serious, at least in pronunciation.  And
>while it causes plenty of problems, making the troubles of English
>orthography well known, it does have one advantage.  In writing (at least,
>semi-formal writing), I can understand anyone who knows English, even if
>they're from an area where I have a hard time understanding the spoken
>English, such as the Bahamas, Australia, Yorkshire, Kentucky, or those on
>the list whose spoken English might sound unintelligible to my ears.  The
>diglossia that has developed (if that's the term) between spoken and written
>"pronunciations" has made it possible for widely divergent dialects to have
>a common written communication form.  It seems to be similar to how Arabic
>and Chinese are understood in their written form by people whose languages
>are closely related, but not mutually intelligible.  Though I might be wrong
>on the Arabic and Chinese, I have had times where I couldn't understand
>other dialects of English, but I could understand their writing.
>
But the problem is that unless we stop teaching English phonemically,
the spellings are going to diverge. The current attitude towards correct
spelling in teenagers is that it's not necessary and I have no idea
whether that'll work its way up until eventually, I could publish a
newspaper mixing up 'saw' and 'sore', or you one spelling 'father' as
'fother' with no-one locally will notice the difference, but it wouldn't
surprise me...

BTW ... Where's your spoken English from? And do you really have trouble
with real Australian English or is limited to say Broad or Artificial
Hollywood Australian?

Tristan.

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