Re: My Apologies about Mysterious sounds

Isaac A. Penzev wrote:

>Chris Bates wrote:
>
>
>
>
>>I get English, Spanish (well, one dialect of Spanish... the rest just
>>pronounce it s)... *thinks* what else am I missing? I know there are
>>lots more... Arabic has it doesn't it? I might be wrong about that one...
>>
>>
>
>I can add Arabic, Swahili, Mn Greek, Bashkir, Turkmen (not sure about this
>one).
>
>
>
Most speakers of Swahili don't get T or D right... its a sound in
borrowed Arabic words (which there are a great many of) I believe, they
tend to become other sounds in the speech of most people (also because
its widely spoken as a trade language, and most other people who learn
it don't have T or D in their native languages). In an awful lot of
languages with T and D the trend seems to have been to eliminate them...
I already mentioned Spanish in which a lot of dialects have changed T to
s, and Swahili, and even in English the trend around my area in
colloquial speech (Midlands) is to eliminate T in favour of f. The same
trend is much more widespread in the north, and many of my northern (as
in northern england) friends at university simply can't manage to
pronounce T. Its always f in their speech. For some reason T isn't
popular... but its one of the sounds I like most in English. :) I
dislike the way people who pronounce it f sound, but that use seems to
be growing. :(

Reply