Re: YAEPT: track

I once read a book aimed at enabling students to
make *very* narrow transcriptions of English speech.
It claimed that the actual phonetic realization of
'/tSr/' where it occurs is [t`s`] -- not unreasonably
if the realization of /r/ is retroflex, which it
apparently is in most accents in both the US and
the UK.

FWIW [t`], [t`s`] and [tr\`] are all allophones
of a single phoneme (with an aspirated and sometimes
a voiced counterpart) in Lhasa Tibetan, all descended
from *tr if Tibetan orthography is something to go by,
so this is probably a very natural assimilatory tendency.

Swedish like English has very various realizations of
/r/ in different lects.  I don't know if those who
have [z`] for /r/ have [d`z`] and [t`s`] for /dr/
and /tr/, but it wouldn't surprise me.  I normally
have alveolar [t] and [d] before /r/ [r\], while
my /t/ and /d/ otherwise are (post)dental, also when
I use [4] for following /r/ -- I have three free or
stylistic /r/ allophones [r\] [4] and [r], although
I think I only ever use [r] intervocalically for /rr/.
(You might say I'm actually bi- or tri-lectal, with
my most 'classy' lect having normally [r\] but and
then a gliding scale towards only /r/ [4] and /rr/ [r]
in my least 'classy' lect.) Maybe it goes without
saying that the [r\] allophone gets devoiced after
voiceless stops.

Interestingly there is a tendency among young,
mostly female, Swedish speakers to insert a
[@]-ish sound in Cr  and Cv combinations,
so that you get [t_h@r\e:] for _tre_ '3' and
[t_h@v\o:] for _två_ '2'.  It surely is most
noticeable in those two words, but probably only
because they are often said in isolation --
("How many potatoes do you want?").  Maybe
Swedish won't have any Cr and Cv combinations
a hundred years from now!


R A Brown skrev:
> Joe wrote:
>
>> Larry Sulky wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> >> 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.
>
>
> It does occur in the UK, but it ain't universal here either. In those
> parts of the UK where /r/ is trilled (whether apical or uvular) or
> flapped, it certainly doesn't occur. Nor is it IME universal before the
> southern English alveolar approximant.
>
> As for the anglophone world at large, it does not occur in South African
> English (where /r/ is trilled or flapped) - but I'm not certain about Oz
> or NZ (it's been a very long while since I watched Neighbours   :)
>
> As for me, when I was a youngster I said [tSr\&k] - but, having moved
> around a bit since then, and been influenced by other speech habits, I
> now say [t_hr\_h&k].
>
> Thinks: I'll listen carefully today to how others down in the part of
> Surrey say initial tr- and dr-      :)
>
>

--


/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

    a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot

                                 (Max Weinreich)

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