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Re: Furrin phones in my own lect!

From:Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
Date:Wednesday, March 29, 2006, 11:30
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)

Replies

Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>