Re: Finnish English

The main consideration with Finnish English is number of sounds.  A
bit like the orthography in my language: I had no stops, so I must
look for other similarities.  In Finnish, an example is "tsa:t", which
is about how they wuold pronounce "chat."

On 12/12/05, John Vertical <johnvertical@...> wrote:
> Roger Mills  wrote:
> >
> >John Vertical wrote:
> > > Anyway, practically everyone here pronounces "New York" as
> > > /ny: jo:k/ or some variation thereof. The fronting applies widely
> > > to word-final /ju:/, and some people (like me) extend this to
> > > various other environments - at its worst, to all non-initial
> > > positions. The /y:/ in question tends to be a [y:] proper only in
> > > the speech of people with little to none English fluency.
> > > Eg. I pronounce "few new clues" as something like [fHu\ n_jHu\
> > > k_hlHu\s] and definitely not [fy: ny: kly:s]
> >
> >To me is sounds as if you've simply adopted the local pronunciation
> >of that  particular name, New York, which in turn is probably based
> >on Swedish _ny_  or maybe just some local deformation.......
>
> >Would you pronounce [ny:] in a less-known name, say, New Brunswick, New
> >Haven, Newton Upper Falls :-)))??
>
> Um, as explained, I would not pronounce *[y:]* in ANY English word (except
> maybe for parody reasons)... but what I call /y:/ I do use in all instances
> of "new". You're probably right about the Swedish influence, but this also
> applies to words where there is no instantly obvious Swedish cognate - say,
> "few".
>
>
> > > I could dig deeper into the stereotypical Finnish pronounciation of >
> >English, but I guess you may have lost your interest already.
> >
> >Not at all.  I'm sure there's a "Finnish-English" accent, just as there are
> >XXX-English accents in every country where Engl. is an acquired language--
> >and for many, not as carefully studied (or taught), perhaps, as one might
> >wish.
>
> Certainly there is. But mostly it's just mapping English phonemes to Finnish
> ones, mixed with a number of spelling pronounciations and L1 analogies.
> You are right, however, that it's not really studied or taught as well as it
> could. During the 10 years of English I read in school, I don't recall *any*
> teacher or textbook explicitely mentioning that there are differences
> between eg. English /U/ and Finnish /u/. (Of course we had audio material to
> listen to for correct pronounciation, but said distinction and several
> others are lost to Finnish ears.)
>
> John Vertical
>