LL-L "Phonology" 2003.09.05 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 05.SEP.2003 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
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From: Allison Turner-Hansen <hallison at gte.net>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2003.09.03 (01) [E]

Dear Lowlanders,
    Joe Stromberg  wrote:

> At the risk of changing the subject, has anyone seen a decent article or
> treatise on the optional, 'mobile' (whatever) /s/ in Indo-European? I am
> mostly
> interested in Germanic. I am beginning to see it everywhere I look:
>
> (s)melt, kick ~ schicken [?], steer ~ thjorr (taurus), (s)plash, spume
> (Latin) ~ foam, (s)tack, etc. (I may be wrong about some of these.)
>
> I suppose the ultimate solution is to buy a copy of Julius Pokorny's
famous
> dictionary, but it is still hovering around $525 used, according to
Amazon.
> In
> the meantime, I would settle for a decent journal article on the subject.
>
> Cheers,
> Joe Stromberg,
> Auburn, Alabama

Dear Joe,
    I asked my professor, Jared Klein, about this, and he replied that Mark
Southern wrote a dissertation, subsequently published as a monograph, about
s-mobile.  It is part of the Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph
Series, and it came out about three or four years ago.
    I'm sure it doesn't focus on Germanic, but it must have plenty of
Germanic ( indeed, lowlands Germanic) examples.
Cheers!
Allison Turner-Hansen

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From: Gary Taylor <gary_taylor_98 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Phonology

Hi all

About dropping of h's. According to my Oxford
Etymology Dictionary the pronunciation of herb without
an h was common until the 19th century, which would
explain why the Americans retained this pronunciation.
My concise Oxford dictionary printed in the 90's only
lists hotel with the h pronunciation, so it seems that
hotel without the h in standard English is now
distinctly old-fashioned. However, according to the
Oxford Atlas of English Dialects, the majority of
England English 'working class' accents drop the h
regularly, apart from in Northumbria, East Anglia and
Essex, and areas of the mid South West.

My own feeling for dropping the h is that I don't in
main words such as nouns and verbs, but I do drop the
h in pronouns etc. If an h appears initially in a
sentence I would always pronounce it.

I've been trying to think about the Estuary English
rule of changing an l to a vowel before a consonant
and whether this occurs before h. I haven't been able
to come to any conclusions though. 'Jailhouse' for me
would thus have two alternate pronunciations in
Estuary - either [dZaohaos] (which for me is the most
natural) or [dZaolaos] and possibly even a further
with a devoiced l, but I'd have to record me saying it
and then analyse it... hmm maybe another day.

Pronunciation of huge with [ç] I think is standard in
England English, although it's represented
phonologically as /hj/.

Gary

ps. Just one further question. When are American films
going to realise that the Brits don't still talk with
this plummy accent dating back to the 1920's radio
broadcasts??? Noone says suit as /sju:t/ anymore to
name but one. As soon as I hear a British accent
wrongly portrayed in a film I instantly dislike it!
Independence Day and Pearl Harbor to name two
culprits!!! And Dick van Dyke does an appalling job of
Cockney in Mary Poppins!

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Phonology

I wonder about the pronunciation of the English word  "homage" (< French
_homage_ [o'ma:Z]).  I learned to say ['?OmIdZ] (which, aside from the /h/
issue, is consistent with "pottage" ['pOt_hIdZ] (< French _pottage_
[po'ta:Z]), though you do occasionally hear non-nativized ['pO't_hQ:Z]).
Once in a while I hear "homage" pronounced ['hOmIdZ].  This latter variant
might be viewed as "fully nativized" (i.e., fully adapted to English rules)
with regard to spelling.  More rarely I hear someone say  [?O'mQ:Z] or
['@'mQ:Z], both in the US and elsewhere.  Is this generally acceptable?  It
seems to be a non-nativized variant (although in the original French there
is no glottal stop, and the vowels would be colored differently.

Another thing ...  A couple of speakers of US English have told me that they
feel irritated or amused by BBC speakers' pronunciation of "Pentagon" (or
"pentagon," I guess) as
['p_hEnt(_h)@gIn] or ['p_hEnt(_h)Ig at n] (i.e., with _i_ as in "kin" or with a
schwa sound in
<-gon>, as in "Oregon" ['?OrIg at n]).  I have argued that it is more
consistent with English phonological rules than is the American
pronunciation with [...gOn] in an unstressed syllable.  But this did not
impress them, not even when I pointed out that they are also irritated by
the rare pronunciation of "Oregon" as ['?Or at gOn] (with _-gon_ pronounced as
in "gone"), often used by speakers on the East Coast.  "Standard" American
English speakers also tend to regard as sub-standard ("Southern") or
"foreign" (e.g., Canadian) the schwa pronunciation in words like
"program(me)" (['proUgr at m]) instead of their pronunciation with a "full"
vowel as in "gram(me)."

Over the years living in this country (having had mostly experiences in
England and Australia) I have gradually bowed to all the pressure and now
use "full" vowels in such instances.  This also applies to my previous habit
of dropping vowels as in "secretary" (['sEkrIt_hEri] > ['sEkrItri] =
"seckritree" at the end) and "cemetary" (['sEmItri] = "semmitree").  It was
perceived as just too funny by Americans ("What kind of tree?") for me to
maintain; so I now say ['sEkrItæri] and ['sEmItæri] repectively.  Oh, and I
now say a full vowel in unstressed "...berry," as in "strawberry"
(['strQ:bEri]), which I used to pronounce ['stro:bri], much to the "delight"
of many Americans.

Another "habit" I've had to drop here (having picked it up in Australia) is
the realization of /st/ as [St] ("sht") where the following syllable has
<u>, as in "estuary," "astute" or "student."  Most American speakers do not
pronounce the <u> as [ju] in this case, so this assimilation rule cannot
apply in their speech.  I also had to abandon the tendency toward
pronouncing /s/ as [S] before /r/, as in [Stro:], now [strQ:].

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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