Re: YAEPT: track

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

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