Re: THEORY: language and the brain [Interesting article]

Quoting Ian Spackman <ianspackman@...>:

> At 09:33 01/07/03, Chris Bates <christopher.bates@...>
> wrote:
>
> >What is the actual difference between the brains of left and right
> >handed people? I've heard "in left handed people the right hemisphere
> is
> >dominant and in right handed people the left " which I think is true,
> >but what other common differences are there? Or is it all just too
> >random to say? I'm asking because I'm left handed... thinking about
> it,
> >I actually had to have speech therapy to learn how to pronounce T and
> D
> >(english th), I couldn't pronounce them for the life of me until after
> I
> >started school, which means I was older than 5 at the time... can't
> >remember how old I was when I started. But anyway, the thing about
> where
> >and how languages are processed just made me wonder if left handers
> have
> >problems like that more commonly than right handers or not.
>
> Well, not pronouncing T and D is nothing unusual.  I'm right-handed,
> and
> the teacher called me aside when I was 5 to teach me to say them
> ("stick
> your tongue between your teeth.... don't worry, it's not rude").  Come
> to
> that, I can remember that when I was 4 (or maybe 3) I did not even
> distinguish them aurally: I remember thinking that it was a very bad
> design
> that "free" and "three" sounded the same, given that they both occur in
> the
> context of prices.
Maybe we should do a list of all conlangers who've not have trouble with [T]
and [D]? Despite much help from parents and teachers when I started to learn
English in fourth grade, I didn't master them till several years later, when I
borrowed myself a phonetics book, from whose descriptions I managed to get it.
Till I learnt to say 'em properly, I used [d] for /D/, and for /T/ [t] and
[f], with quite random distribution - I used to say [fIN] "thing" and
[tINk] "think".

I also, perhaps more creatively, had trouble with voiced fricatives. I still
tend to devoice English /z/ and /Z/ way too often.

                                                         Andreas

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