LL-L "Accents" 2005.02.24 (07) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 24.FEB.2005 (07) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West) Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: Þjóðríkr Þjóðreksson <didimasure at hotmail.com>
Subject: Accents


>From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
>Subject: Accents
>
>Gary claims not to like the sound of Dutch. He is not the only one. Way
long
>ago my Austrian friend Nicky Pfusterschmidt coined the following –
>unforgettable – judgment: “Dutch is not a language; it is a disease of the
>throat”.
>
>As a speaker of BABN ( bekakt, algemeen beschaafd Nederlands ), I must
>confess that every time I come back there I am shocked by the harshness of
>the pronunciation of “g” and “ch”, especially in Amsterdam, and I shudder
>when I hear people, even members of parliament, speak with the emphatic
>diphtongs of modern Polderdutch. (kaiken instead of kijken).  Interesting
>enough, that is a reflection of the sociopolitical scene. My “Twentse”
>cousins now speak with a very soft Saxon “zoom”,  when on the other side of
>the IJssel, where they would not have done that when they were children or
>at University. I must confess I like it. And so it goes…. Jacqueline

Hi Jaqueline! One of the most clearly audible differences between a speaker
of the Southern linguistic area (under the Big Rivers as it's also often
called; Belgium + Limburg + Northern Brabant) and the Northern (biggest part
of the Netherlands) is the sound of the g and ch. The southern one is often
called "soft g". Both are accepted prononciations for Standard Dutch.
Many Belgians consider the "Dutch" pronunciation harsh and sometimes even
hostile (just like you) but probably they think the same about us.
It's not always ugly though, imho. Not long ago I heard a Netherlandic
woman, with a clear Netherlandic throat-g/ch, on the television but she
pronounced it in a strange and soft manner that pleased me to listen to it.
I have heard it more often, it's only the very extreme g/ch which I really
don't like.
If you haven't been in Belgium or someone else I will gladly record my g
which I really like ;)

Diederik Masure

PS reading the LS discussions, it seemed me that their g was a fricative as
well, what does it sound like, more like Belgian g, Dutch g or something
entirely different?

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From: Ben Bloomgren <ben.bloomgren at asu.edu>
Subject: LL-L "Accents" 2005.02.24 (06) [E]

I'm not sure about Pakistanis and North Indians, but the South Indians'
accent is one of my personal favorites. I vish ddatt I kood represent
pahlatahl konsonants in English?! They do the upward inflection, and it
makes me almost laugh. I'm noticing that most of our outsourced jobs are
going ddaun ttoo Banglawr.

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


Hi all

Ron, you wrote:

"I don't want to appear "holier than thou" when I say that I have never
ever come across a language or accent that I find unpleasant to hear.  I
truly believe that such perceptions are mostly connected with images of the
speakers' communities, histories and cultures, as well as to attributed
"national characters," and their perceived relationships with the
listeners' communities."

I mostly agree, but I can't see what it is with Dutch that I should have a
preconception about... In England the Dutch are considered to be one of our
few friends on the continent. I could understand having preconceptions about
French and Germans as British films until quite recently, and at least all
the time I was growing up, unfortunately mostly portrayed the French and
Germans in a bad light. However, I now live in Germany and use German every
day (so I guess I have to like it ;) ), and I've always liked the sound of
French, even though this has plenty of word final consonant clusters.

Just a couple of other opinions about languages - I find Swedish sounds more
pleasing than Danish, although I lived with a very unpleasant Swedish woman
for 6 months, and have never met a Dane I haven't liked...

I always find Russian has a pleasant ring to it, and growing up on the other
side of the then iron curtain, not sure how I can explain that one...

Polish sounds a lot softer than closely related Czech, and therefore to me a
lot nicer.

I like listening to Japanese, but am not too mad on Chinese.

I was wondering about the 'ch' and 'g' sounds. I do find them harsh, and
when listening to Dutch they do seem to crop up quite often - but saying
this Swiss German also has huge amounts of the 'ach' sound, and that sounds
somehow pleasant to me. So maybe it's just the 'g' I don't like. I also find
Arabic and Hebrew quite harsh because of their 'throaty' sounds. :/

I'm not even sure it has anything to do with unfamiliar sounds, as the
'click' languages (at least the ones I've heard) in Southern Africa all
sound nice to me.

I don't know what it is. I hope I don't have any hidden prejudices against
the Dutch - maybe my mother did and used to whisper bad things to me about
the language while I was still in the womb - I'll never know.

Gary

p.s. My mum's lovely really, and I'm sure she has also never had negative
feelings towards our neighbours across the North Sea...


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

Hi again, Gary, and thanks for being so frank and forthcoming.  You are
obviously eager to find out what the reasons for your own perceptions may be
(since you don't have any of those prejudices).  I don't claim to have the
answer, but I would like to add another suggestion to the ones I already
submitted.

Physically, spoken language consists of a serious of sounds and movements
made with your mouths and throats.  That's not the only activity the oral
cavity and its accoutrements have to perform.  Many sounds they do or want
to produce are considered uncouth, not socially acceptable because these
sounds are associated with bodily functions.  When we eat, speak, deal with
food mishaps, with gastric disturbances or with cold or allergy symptoms we
try to do what we've been taught to do: minimize and mask these things.
However, what is "couth" and what is not varies between cultures.  For
instance, in Eastern Asia it is perfectly fine to slurp while eating, even
to burb, just as it is quite fine to drag one's feet while walking, manners
that are "beaten out" of us as children in the "West."  Moreover, in China,
at least on the Mailand and until recently, it is/was perfectly all right to
clear one's throat quite noisily, cough up a wad of phlegm and spit it on
the ground, yes, even on the floor, yes, in sight of everyone -- much to the
initial horror of Western visitors.  (This is how it was in medieval
Europe.)  On the other hand, in Japan we Westerners tend to fail.  There you
are supposed to "mask" your laughter as much as possible, not to guffaw and,
at least in the case of women, not to show your open laughing mouth or your
toothy grin, and, yes, to avoid moving your mouth a lot while speaking.  You
have to hide your laughter and smile behind your hand or something else if
you are female.  Japanese is spoken with one's lips barely ever moving and
one's teeth rarely visible, unlike for instance in Chinese, which looks
quite off-putting to Japanese on the basis of their own cultural etiquette.

What I am trying to get at here is that the pronunciation of some languages
may require the use of sounds and lip movements that are or approach uncouth
behavior in other cultures.  This alone can be off-putting, at least
initially.  It is my hunch that uvular fricatives fall into this category,
as perceived for instance by speakers or English and Japanese where these
sounds are absent from language and polite social behavior.  This would
explain a lot about people's perception of ("throaty") Dutch, German
(especially Swiss German) and (European-based) Modern Hebrew pronunciation.

There are foreign speech sounds that grate on people because in the
listener's languages they are associated with speech defects, thus sound
"sick," "deficient," even "stupid."  For instance, interdental English "th"
initially sounds like a speech defect to German speakers who associate it
with a lisp, and they associate the syllable-final Danish and Spanish /d/
with a "slack lisp," as if pronounced by a drunk or a stroke sufferer.
(However, these days Germans are so inundated with English sound bytes that
this reaction may be vanishing.)  Also, the Welsh sound for <ll> (which also
occurs in  numerous American languages) sounds like a speech defect to many,
like a mispronounced /s/ (with lateral friction).  Uvular /r/ sounds rather
"ugly" to many speakers of English, and among Finnish speakers it is
reminiscent of a speech defect.  Americans have told me that they prefer
Latin American Spanish to that of Spain, and this is in part due to the
pronunciation of <j> being [h] (or a [x] with little friction) in the former
and a more fricative [x] in the latter.  In German, each word supposedly
starting with a vowel actually starts with a glottal stop, and liaison does
not apply; German thus tends to sound "choppy" to speakers of English and of
Romance languages, and "choppy" is not "good."

Cantonese has effectively nine tones, while Mandarin has only four.  To
distinguish tones, Cantonese (like unrelated Vietnamese) thus requires a
larger tonal range than does Mandarin, needs to go higher up and lower down
on the scales, and it therefore sounds "more irritating" to outsiders, like
"having an argument," or like scolding.  Westerners (as well as to speakers
of Japanese and Malay/Indonesian) associate it with strident, aggressive
behavior, and it thus rubs them the wrong way.  All of that dissipates ones
you actually understand the language.

And the list goes on and on ... I assume you got my drift by now.

There are "good" and "bad" foreign sounds, depending on the listener's
perception based on his or her own cultural conditioning.  The "good" sounds
may be perceived as "exotically charming," while the "bad" ones tend to be
associated with non-speech sounds that are to be avoided in one's own
cultural environment.

Of course, there are other issues, such as intonational ones, particularly
rising intonation in statements (as among English speakers of Northern
Ireland and many in Australia and New Zealand), which is elsewhere
considered restricted to questions and is by many perceived as "irritatingly
indecisive" when it occurs in statements.

Just brain-storming here ...

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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