LL-L "Phonology" 2006.04.09 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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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 (Zeeuws)
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   L O W L A N D S - L * 08 April 2006 * Volume 02
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2006.04.01 (07) [E/LS]

> From: Gary Taylor <gary_taylor_98 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: LL-L language varieties
>
> Yeah I tend to agree with you here. My biggest
> giveaway that I'm English when speaking German (which
> I do on a daily basis, living in Berlin) are my
> vowels. German vowels to me are quite 'pure', as in
> they sound like pure monophthongs or diphthongs to my
> ears. My own London flavoured vowels are far from pure
> - almost all my long vowels are at least slightly
> diphthongised, and this also carries over when I'm
> speaking foreign languages. I do try to 'tense my
> mouth up' enough to speak German, but I think this is
> an impossibility for Londoners. Or at least that's my
> excuse...
>
I've been thinking about this and it seems to me that the secret of 
producing pure monophthongs lies in keeping the tongue still rather than 
tensing the whole mouth (tensing the whole mouth or jaw seems to me to 
be a characteristic of an Italian accent).

I think in particular you need to depress the back of the tongue to keep 
it still. The more you depress it, the darker or hollower the accent 
sounds. Thus Welsh accents have pure monophthongs but sound brighter 
than Scots because the back of the tongue is depressed to hold it still, 
but not as much as in Scots. I think!

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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