Re: R: Re: Droppin' D's Revisited

P. Brown wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, Barry Garcia wrote:
>
> >>Isn't that the common pronunciation in Spanish? :)
> >
> >Not quite. The d sound intervocalically and finally in the Spanish I hear
> >a lot, seems to still be holding on (even though it's fairly faint, and
> >even when I pronounce it, it's faint as well). I do a complete drop.
> >Perhaps peninsular Spanish it's dropped, but for Latin American Spanish
> >(Mexican at least) it seems to still be there.
> >>
>
> Depends on the region of Spain. Catalan, of course, doesn't have -d
> (ciuta', etc. I don't remember how past ppls are made off hand);
My dialect (Como, Northern Italy) has 'cantaa' /kan'ta/ (feminine 'cantada')
from the verb 'cantà' /kan'ta/ (to sing). The difference is hold only in
written form of the language.

Luca

> Andalusian also drops -d (amao, ciuda). Central Spain, of course
> retains it (TiuDaD, amaDo).
>
> >Since my mom works at a school, she says when they teach the kids how to
> >read, they call the vowels hard or soft.
>
> That's almost as bad as long and short (we already have hard and soft
> cees and gees), in my opinion; though it _is_ better than long and
> short by a goodly way. Why not just say that English has x number of
> distinct vowels and lay to rest the myth of 5 long and 5 short vowels
> a la Latin. If Latinate case distinction (an hedgehog, of an hedgehog,
> to an hedgehog, on an hedgehog, with an hedgehog, etc.) doesn't work;
> then certainly [ej]="long a" / [a]="short a" is equally ridiculous.
> Perhaps they could be called off-glide or plain? Something like that.
>
> Padraic.
>