Re: USAGE: rhotics (was: Advanced English + Babel text)

Good lord, I just used up one of my posts to Conlang by sending an empty
reply.  I was attempting to enlarge the message screen and went to the left
hand button instead of the right.  Encroaching senility.

----- Original Message -----
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>


> On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 17:06:29 +0100, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
> wrote:
>
>>Christophe used to tell us that the uvular trill is as good as dead in the
>>French of France today, the uvular fricative being close to universal.
>
> Thank you for this information, Andreas and Sally! I ignored it.
>
> ==========================================
>
> On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 12:11:30 -0500, Sally Caves <scaves@...>
> wrote:
>
>>I've never heard a uvular trill [R\] among francophones; rather, the
>>fricative [R] or the unvoiced fricative /x/, especially after "t":
>>"trois,"
>>etc.  The uvular trills I'm familiar with occur in Hebrew (in fact I was
>>just practicing it with a group of Israelis the other night), and among
>>certain German speakers.  Many Germans, I gather, don't trill, but merely
>>fricatize the "r"; but I have a teasing friend who tells me that I sound
>>French when I pronounce German.  That may well be; my training has been
>>mostly in French and Spanish.
>
> Because of the /r/-realization? I would have said that the French accent
> of
> German isn't characterized by a specific realization of /r/, but rather
> (by
> rhythm and melody, of course) by the realization of /ç/ , /h/ and /i/.
Actually, I didn't really believe my friend.  He said my "r" pronunciation
in German wasn't "robust" enough, but sounded French.  Actually, I think my
best linguistic gifts lie in phonic mimicry.  (Which is why I thought of
becoming an actress in my late teens).  I have a very good ear for
pronunciations and can usually reproduce them pretty well, which has gotten
me in trouble a few times when my rapid comprehension was not up to my
speaking.  So no, I'm not giving German the rhythm and melody of French. I
try very hard to get the "robust" rhythms of German, but they are often a
tongue-twister for me.

>>The history of |r| and its developments in not only France but Germany and
>>England is an interesting and I think quite complex one.  Maybe somebody
>>else, here, can unpack it.  As I understand it, and I may be wrong, /R/ in
>>French was a fairly recent development--seventeenth/eighteenth
>>century--and
>>until then the common way to pronounce it was as a flap, as in Spanish, or
>>a front trill.  I know from studying Old French that it was presumed to be
>>flapped or trilled.  But the change, I have read, came about with changes
>>in England and Germany, especially the dropping of final /r/ in England.
>>Is this true?
>
> Are you asking whether the change originated in Germany and England (I
> don't
> get the meaning of "the change came about")?
No, I'm asking when it occurred in France.  "Came about [occurred]" in
France.  Seventeenth-century, I always thought, and I think you answer this
question below.

> I've heard that the uvular
> trill was first intoduced by French curtisanes at the court of the
> absolute
> kings, became fashionable among the nobles and spread more and more.
>
> German
> also had originally a trill-flap, and the uvular pronunciation is said to
> be
> a French import.
Interesting.  Not adopted, however, by the English.

> It's very interesting that there is a non-rhotic pronunciation in German
> as
> well as in English, even though the two languages' most common
> r-realizations are very different: with the tip of the tongue in English
> and
> with the uvula in German.
Yes!

> I've always thought of the German non-rhoticity to
> be related to the uvular realization of the /r/, but that might be wrong.
It might be right.  I've heard "der" pronounced as though it rhymes with
British English "hair."  I'm aware that there must be variations, and I
suspect that the non-rhotocization in both cultures arises from different
causes.  A mysterious and curiously unstable sound.

> By the way, I assume that English also had a trill-flap /r/ originally,
> but
> is there any evidence on the time it was fricativized?
I'm unsure what you mean by fricativized when speaking of British English
pronunciation.  Do you mean "flapped"?  Retroflex?  Every American is taught
that the retroflex "r" we use is a carry-over from sixteenth-century English
immigration from the south and the midlands, with variations--such as the
Puritans, who were beginning to drop the final "r" (hence our common
Bostonian "I pahked the cah in the garage")--and a lot of New England, for
that matter.  But this is a complex issue that requires me to go digging
about in my History of the English language books.  When I pronounce Old
English, I flap the "r" or trill it.  We don't know with much certainty how
it was pronounced.  It may have been retroflex, for all we know.  The
retroflex "r" seems oooold.

>>Never got into Schweizerdeutsch... I don't even know how to spell the way
>>they pronounce it there! :(    Swizerdutsch?  And then all the
>>variations!!
>
> |Schwyzerdütsch| and |Schwiizertütsch| may be the most common ways to
> write
> it, but many variations are possible (the |y| is used for /i/ as opposed
> to
> |i| for /I/, but not all share this use).
Are you Swiss?  Do you or have you live(d) in Switzerland?


And what about my other question:  is there any evidence in natural
languages of the "r" I described for Teonaht: a retroflex forward flap
against the back of the alveolar ridge?  It gives it quite a distinct sound,
to my mind!   I need Sampa illustrations of all the different pronunciations
of r.  Can someone please supply me with that?

Thanks!
Sally