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Re: YAEPT: track

From:Yahya Abdal-Aziz <yahya@...>
Date:Tuesday, June 13, 2006, 7:21
On Mon, 12 Jun 2006, Joe wrote:
> > Larry Sulky wrote: > > > On 6/12/06, caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...> wrote: > > > >> >veritosproject@... wrote: > >> > >> >How do you guys pronounce /track/? I heard a couple Americans saying > >> >[tSr\&k], and I was just wondering where that [S] came from. I > >> >actually pronounced it that way until recently, when I consciously > >> >tried stopping. > >> > >> Boy, you never realize until someone points it out. It's [tSr\&k] for > >> me. I tried a few others: trap, train, trunk, etc. They all begin > >> with [tS], unless I'm very careful. > >> > >> BTW, I say [bam] for "bomb." > >> > >> Charlie > >> > > > > Nope, it's just [tr\&k] for me: west coast American, with Canadian and > > American-midwest influence plus oddballs from who-knows-where. > > > > I'm wrong about it's universality, then. But it definitely occurs in > the UK and (I think) Australia.
Hmmm ... Yes, it may occur in Australia, but IME uncommonly. If it did, it would be poorly regarded by our English teachers (I think!) The teacher I wrote of the other day - who last taught in the early sixties! - used to have fits over what she called "poor enunciation". Not clearly distinguishing the sounds in "train track" would certainly have earned her ire. I hasten to remind you that she was NOT inclined to teach spelling pronunciations, as, eg in "forehead" or "towards". Prescription aside, I guess it does occur quite commonly. And since this *is* YAEPT, I'd like to mention another aspect of modern English pronunciation: speed. Australia is one of the most highly urbanised nations, myths of crocodile hunters and the great open spaces notwithstanding. Yet the concentration of people in our cities has continued to increase during the last 60 or more years, while country towns often wither and die. I've noticed two things in this connection: city people speak faster than country peoople, and every gener- ation speaks faster than its parents did. At times, now, I struggle to keep up with what my younger friends are saying - simply disting- uishing the sounds they're making is becoming a challenge. (We've always had a reputation for not opening our mouths when we speak, and we try to live up to it!) Yet my parents used to chide me for "gabbling", so clearly I spoke too quickly for them ... If we *are* speeding up our language, then we would necessarily start to blur, merge and even lose some articulations, wouldn't we? That might account for: [tr&:k] > [t_ar\&:k] > [tSr\&:k]. Is this tendency to greater speed of speech universal in Anglophone countries? Francophone? Globally? Will it lead to an acceleration of sound changes? Regards, Yahya -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.3/362 - Release Date: 12/6/06

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Tristan Alexander McLeay <conlang@...>