Re: USAGE: pronunciation mimicry (was: rhotics)

Oh, but it's not totally acquired!  Of the gifts of foreign language
learning, I count a good mimicry of the sounds the easiest.  There is all
the rest, of course.  The mastery of vocabulary, idiom, reading and writing
knowledge, comprehension, and so forth and so on.  Actually, I wish it came
more easily to me.  I have friends who can pick up a language in six months,
and are babbling away cheerfully with thick accents.

Sally

----- Original Message -----
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 1:35 PM
Subject: Re: USAGE: pronunciation mimicry (was: rhotics)


> On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 10:33:24 -0500, Sally Caves <scaves@...>
> wrote:
>
>>From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>
>>
>>> A most remarkable and seldom gift! I've known A Swiss German who told me
>>> that native speaker of Spanish had taken him for mentally challenged
>>> because of his lack of vocabulary.
>>
>>Ha!  Yeah, that's the problem.  You have some basic vocabulary and some
>>useful phrases, but you speak them well.  Then no defenses to muster
>>against charges of idiocy.  But I usually have some trace of an accent.  I
>>prided myself, though, in Geneva in being able to hide my American
>>heritage.  People usually asked me if I was from Britain or Germany.  Had
>>to practice, then, on my plosives.
>>
>>Is mimicry of pronunciation that remarkable?  I'm fairly good at accents,
>>too, but not flawless.  A lot of Americans like to make fun of a southern
>>accent, assuming that it is monolithic and not multifarious and regional.
>
> That kind of mimicry is not remarkable, but it is remarkable that somebody
> can so totally acquire a foreign language that even native speakers of the
> same region are cheated!
>
> gry@s:
> j. 'mach' wust
>
>
>
> <off-topic>
>
>>>>Are you Swiss?  Do you or have you live(d) in Switzerland?
>>>
>>> Yes, I do, I live in Berne and speak Bernese German.
>>
>>I had a very pleasant visit to Berne.  We went in December of 1985.  We
>>clocked the time it took for the signs to change from "sortie" to
>>"Ausfahrt" on the Autobahn.  We fed carrots to the bears, all of them very
>>antic, and I took a picture of my friend next to a wall near the bear pit
>>that had graffiti written on it: Ba"r oder nicht Ba"r: das ist hier die
>>Frage.  I have a picture here of store on a corner (a no entry sign on the
>>street).  The building has a corner tower on it next to an arcade.
>>Painted
>>on the cement wall is "Apotheke und Drogerie: Scheidegger," and above it
>>is
>>a mural of customers dressed in seventeenth century clothing.  IS THAT
>>STILL THERE?
>
> I don't know. I've been in the old city and have had a look at the
> pharmacy
> I thought you were talking about, but it wasn't that one...
>
> By the way, the name "Scheidegger" is very Swiss, even in its spelling:
> The
> |gg|-digraph is only used in Switzerland for a fortis /k:/, which is
> represented by |(c)k| in standard German. Swiss German "der Egge"
> (corner/hill) corresponds to standard German "die Ecke/das Eck" (corner).
>
>>I had no Schwiizertu"tsche, much less the Bernese German
>
> In Bernese German, it'd be "Schwytzerdütsch"! ;)
>
> </off-topic>
>

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