Re: CHAT: Hello

 --- Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote: > Thomas
> IIRC, William Labov's groundbreaking study, in the
> 60s, of Martha's Vineyard
> (or was it Nantucket??) speech compared data
> recorded by the dialect survey
> conducted in the 30s with speech current in the
> 60s-- there were noticeable
> changes in pronunciation, especially in the
> diphthongs.  In many cases it
> was possible to compare children/grandchildren of
> the same people who'd been
> recorded in the 30s.  Social factors were involved,
> e.g. orientation of of
> younger people to the island's culture, vs. desire
> to leave the island and
> participate in the "mainland" economy/culture,
> etc.....no doubt more
> exposure to radio etc.  So apparently _phonetic_
> change can occur within 1
> generation, and that could be true in the Brazilian
> case.  A change /r/ >
> [x] > [h] doesn't disrupt the phonemic system.
i'm too young to remember, but apparently in the 60s
in london there was a voguish pronunciation of /tr/ as
/tS/, so 'train' came out as 'chain'.

more an affectation than a true accent, but it
illustrates the fluidity of pronunciation.

bn

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