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

On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 06:57:55 +0000, Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:

>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.
Remarkable! I wonder whether the same could be said about German children.

>On Wednesday, November 3, 2004, at 05:11 , Sally Caves wrote:
>
>> 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.

>The uvular R could not have become general
>till the 18th century and did not, apparently, become general in Parisian
>speech till the beginning of the 19th century. Once it had become
>fashionable in Parisian speech it spread not only to the rest of northern
>France but also into the Netherlands and into Germany.
Only to parts of these countries, and also to parts of (northern) Italy. In
the dialect of Berne, the patricians, that is, the old upper class, used to
have an uvular trill, whereas everybody else has a lingual trill-tap.

>>  I know from studying Old French that it was presumed to be
>> flapped or trilled.
>
>More likely trilled - tho we can't rule out the flap occurring also. That's
>one of those things that we'd probably need time-travel to resolve   :)
I'm using a lingual /r/, and my experience is that it's very hard to tell
whether it's a trill [r] or a flap [4]. It think it depends on the
neighbouring sounds, on speech speed, and on emphasis. I believe (without
prove) that this is normal in languages that have [r] (unless it's opposed
to [4], as in Spanish). So I believe that not even a time travel would
resolve it. [r] seems to be the more common sign and is used for that
undetermined [r] or [4].

I also believe that this indetermination is the reason for the (already
mentioned) IPA 'assymetry' in retroflex [r`] vs. alveolar [r, 4]: I guess
that the pronunciation of [r`] is as undetermined as the one of [r] (if not
opposed to [4]), and that there are no languages that oppose a retroflex
trill to a retroflex tap.

>I doubt very much that the dropping of final -r in English has anything to
>do with French.
Me too.

>In the case of English
>it is almost certainly the "de-retroflexion" of "de-rhotacization" of
>rhotacized (or reflexive) vowels, the r-colored vowels typical of American
>English and still common in rural dialects of southern England & the
>English Midlands as well as urban dialects of south west England.
>
>Whether something similar happened in German, I do not know. I am not
>aware of rhotacized vowels in any German dialects, but they may occur.
To my knowledge, they don't. Also, I haven't ever heard of a German dialect
that has an approximant [r\] as in English.

>Certainly I know from personal experience that southern Germans don't
>pronounce syllable final /r/ as a consonant but tend to produce either
>long low vowels or centering diphthongs similar to those found in the RP
>of south-east England. I've always assumed these were more recent
>developments and resulted from the weakening of the already weak uvular
>approximant.  But I may well be wrong.
I'm assuming the same as you. However, I'm not sure whether there are
south-eastern "non-rhotic" dialects that have an alveolar [r], not an uvular
one, which would disfavour the idea that the German "non-rhoticity"
originated in a weakening of the uvular approximant.

g_0ry@_0s:
j. 'mach' wust

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