Re: Furrin phones in my own lect!

Mark J. Reed skrev:
> On 3/28/06, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
>
>>the problem is that we Germans switch to English mode, i.e. switch
>>
>>  all /r/ > [r\] and
>>  all /v/ or /w/ (we can't distinguish by default) > [w]
>
>
> Are you saying your typical monlingual German can't actually *hear*
> the difference between [v] and [w]?
I think the problem for most Germans and Scandinavians is that
their L1 has neither [v] nor [w], but [v\], or for some Norwegians
and Germans [B], so that they tend to hear both [v] and [w] as
weirded versions of their native sound.  But I think that what
Henrik is trying to say is that Germans (and it holds for
Scandinavians too) are conditioned to have only *one* phoneme
in this area; it is not the articulation of [w] _per se_ that
is hard, but to maintain a *distinction* between [w] and [v],
and so since [w] is the markedly English sound it is the one
that gets over-used.  On a related note I have no problem
articulating [5], but to maintain a distinction from [l] is
*really* hard.  Thus I don't observe the correct allophony
when speaking English, but use [5] everywhere -- even saying
['mI5j@n] -- or rather ['mI\5:j3\n] :-) -- for "million".

I wonder how this works for Danes, who have [w] as an allophone
of /v/ (or narrowly /v\/) after vowels, e.g. /dav/ [daw] "day".
Does the existence of this allophone make it easier or harder
to manage the English distinction?

As it happens Swedish has a suphonemic [B_o], since in most
accents long /u/ and /8/ are realized as [u:B_o] and something
like [8:B_o].  AFAIK it is definitely this [B_o] I use for
English /w/, and I probably mostly use [v\] for /v/.
No English speaker has complained hitherto, however. And yes
I do have some hypercorrection in the direction of [w], but
not much.  As I mentioned the other day I mostly learnt my
English pronunciation from my father's mother who had lived
in Chicago in the twenties.  She got /w/ right because her
native Swedish dialect (Bohuslänska) actually had a /w/--/v/
distinction: post-vocalic and most initial *w had indeed merged
with /v/ in her dialect, but post-consonantal *w had remained [w],
and since word-initial *h had only later been lost before *w
in words like *hwi:t > /wi:d/ "white" and *hwaD > /wa/ "what"
she had a /w/--/v/ distinction word-initially.  FWIW I do have
some competence in this dialect, but for younger speakers /w/
has merged with /v/...  Funnily my grandmother used [x_w]
-- or even [xB_o)]! --, her realization of Swedish /x/ for
American English /W/, a feature which I have followed.

A distinction which *is* really hard for me is /T/--/t/ and
word-initial /D/--/d/.  They do tend to become [t_d]--[t]
and [d_d]--[d].  Strangely I have less of a problem with
post-vocalic [D], and neither do I confuse /T/ and /t/ in
Icelandic, but my [T], [D] are decidedly *inter*dental,
as are my "/t_d/, /d_d/", so probably really [tT)], [dD)]!

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

    "Maybe" is a strange word.  When mum or dad says it
    it means "yes", but when my big brothers say it it
    means "no"!

                            (Philip Jonsson jr, age 7)

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