Re: USAGE: pronunciation mimicry (was: rhotics)

For some reason, this post I sent last night didn't show up in my mail
spool, so I'm sending it again.  Sorry if it reduplicates a message the rest
of you got but I didn't!  I've expanded it.

----- Original Message -----
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>

>>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.
In response to me, J. wrote:
> 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!
Oh, but it's not totally acquired!  And nobody's cheated!  Of the gifts of
foreign language learning, I count a good mimicry of the sounds the easiest,
and actually the most trivial.  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.  It's probably better to have an okay accent
and speak fluently than it is to have a good accent and speak haltingly,
groping for words.

> <off-topic>
But interesting!

>>>>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...
What a pity...I'm sure the corner still exists.  There's a sign on the edge
of the building between the covered archway and the sightly arched window of
the Apotheke that says "Bim Zytglogge."  I don't know if that's a street
name or a direction.  I'm standing with my camera across the street taking a
picture of the front of the building.  The corner is to the left, with the
archway and the little tower set into the first (i.e., second for Americans)
storey of the building.  The street running perpendicular to the one I'm on
is one-way: there is a "no entry" sign (the ubiquitous round red sign with a
white bar through it), the cars are parked toward me, and I see on that
street on the left side a swinging oval sign that says "Restaurant
Harmonie."

Now of course this was taken nineteen years ago!  If all these businesses
have changed hands, then there's no way to find the corner except by the
little tower and the sign which might still be there: "Bim Zytglogge."  I
don't know what this means in dialect.  Something to do with a bell?
Bim=beim? Zyt=Zeit?  I don't know how Bernese dialect works.  Near/to the
clocktower [time bell]?  Is it a streetname?  Because of the order of my
pictures, my guess is that it's on or near the avenue that ends with the
clock tower, the one with the fountains in the middle.  I hope I'm not being
too naive in suggesting that the Old Town has not changed its basic
structure, and people today, or at least in the last twenty years, don't
demolish architectural features in a city with so much history.

> 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).
So then of course Glogge is Glocke.

>>I had no Schwiizertu"tsche, much less the Bernese German
>
> In Bernese German, it'd be "Schwytzerdütsch"! ;)
Okay.  I'll use only that spelling when conversing with you. :)

Sally
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