Re: English Pronunciation

There's a Sherlock Holmes movie on Arte (French-German
channel) just now. The Hound of the Baskerville (if
that's the English name), with Peter Cushing playing
Holmes, and Christopher Lee in the role of Sir Henry
Baskerville. With French subtitles.

I must say it's a real pleasure to listen to real
English accent (although I couldn't tell WHICH English
accent this is), especially after so many interviews
of American soldiers and officers in Iraq repeating
all the time "We jast came to do the jaaab".

Simply listening to the word "Holmes" pronounced by an
Englishman is a real delight.

--- Joseph Fatula <fatula3@...> wrote:
> Responding to Joe, and a heads up to Philippe:
>
> From: "Joe" <joe@...>
> Subject: Re: My conlang Nemalo
>
>
> (someone else said)
> > >I just assumed the 'official' sound, not the
> sound of some dialect.
> >
> > The problem with English is that, well, there is
> no 'official'
> > pronunciation, unlike French, or something.  North
> American, English,
> > Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Australian, and New
> Zealandic dialects are all
> > quite different, and they all define the
> 'standard' language differently
> > (GA, RP, SSE, and various others)
>
> A few weeks/months ago, one of our Frankspraaker
> brought up a question of
> which English dialect was considered authoritative.
> I'm fairly certain that
> was Philippe.  Anyway, a very good explanation was
> given in response, that
> the people in Houston, Boston, and London don't
> speak like each other, and
> have no desire to speak like each other.
>
> Let me make something clear: Most English-speakers
> don't want to speak like
> any other group of English-speakers.  We don't have
> just some three top
> dialects, but rather a whole horde of them, where
> most people want to speak
> the way they already speak, and consider their own
> dialect authoritative.
> (This may be one of the reasons why YAEPTs keep
> popping up.)
>
> Things like GA (General American) are simply
> constructs, where it's sort of
> an average of American dialects, not one that anyone
> actually speaks.  And
> I'd never heard of it before I got into linguistics.
>
> But if there are scores of top dialects, what
> prevents English from breaking
> up into scores of little independent languages?
> Simply this - that if I say
> something and my listener doesn't understand, I
> won't say it that way
> anymore.  It's for this reason that I hardly use the
> word "turnpike"
> anymore.  For whatever reason, Californians don't
> understand it.  (And it
> might help to know that I moved to California some
> years ago.)  But when I
> pronounce "root" with a vowel like o-umlaut in
> German (sorry, can't remember
> the SAMPA), no one has a problem understanding it.
> Therefore, the
> conditioning factor for my removing it from my
> speech is absent.
>
> Anyone else get this impression about English?  My
> views are mostly formed
> from American dialects in this case, so I might be
> wildly off about English
> in other countries.  My understanding of British
> ones is similar, except
> that RP is a well-known thing with more influence.
>
> Joe Fatula

=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


	
		
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