Re: rhotic miscellany (was: Advanced English + Babel text)

J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:

>On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 06:57:55 +0000, Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
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>>I'm told - tho I don't know how true this is - that this is
>>typical of young children: to start with trilling the uvular but gradually
>>to lose the trill.
>>
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>
>Remarkable! I wonder whether the same could be said about German children.
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>>On Wednesday, November 3, 2004, at 05:11 , Sally Caves wrote:
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>>>Many Germans, I gather, don't trill, but merely
>>>fricatize the "r";
>>>
>>>
>>I gather this is so. At one time the trilled lingual r was also widespread.
>> That was the /r/ used by Hitler, as you hear on ancient newsreels. It may
>>be - I don't know - that this accounts for its demise in the last half
>>century.
>>
>>
>
>I rather suppose this is because the pronunciation of standard German has
>become less prescriptive. The prescribed realization of /r/ was a lingual
>trill-tap [r], and in the first half of the 20th century, an strong uvular
>trill was common on radio. I also suppose that the trill was favoured
>because it's more clearly audible, taking into account that the sound
>technology wasn't that avanced at this time and that it was the very first
>generation that had electric amplification, since before, the bare human
>voice had to be strong enough.
>
>
I had a Swiss teacher, who had an alveolar [r].  She also had [e], where
the German I learnt has [@](so, for instance, 'ruhe' was [rue], or similar).