LL-L 'Phonology' 2006.11.06 (01) [E]

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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
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L O W L A N D S - L * 06 November 2006 * Volume 01
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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: LL-L 'Phonology' 2006.10.31 (09) [E]

>From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
>Subject: Phonology
>
>To me, this group of varieties sounds closest to "typical" Canadian English
>varieties and also to English varieties of parts of Montana, Wyoming, the
>Dacotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin. However, the Native American varieties have
>their own features and configurations thereof, most of which I haven't yet
>figured out. One feature I can think of is monophthong [o:] (e.g., in "go") and
>[e:] (e.g., in "late"). There are also some interesting voice production things
>going on as well as somewhat monotone ("flat") intonation.
>
>
This is exactly how these vowels would be pronounced in Scottish
English, being those found also in the Scots substrate. If this is
significant, then there could be a couple of explanations:

1. Older English and Scots may have been closer to each other in
pronunciation two or three hundred years ago, and American Indians etc
originally learned this sort of English.

2. American Indians etc may have come across a wide variety of English
dialects amongst settlers and explorers and preferred to learn from
Scottish dialects, since its simple monophthong system of pronunciation
was much easier to produce.

I don't really think explanation 1 holds much water. Didn't we discuss
some time ago how phonological features such as diphthongisation in
southern and northern English was reflected in southern and northern
varieties of Low Saxon, suggesting that diphthongisation in English is a
very old feature indeed?

Explanation 2 seems better. I once had an Italian friend who, on hearing
my accent, said he wished he'd known that English could be spoken this
way, so that he wouldn't have had to struggle with all the tricky vowel
sounds in English as he was taught it.

A monotonic way of speaking wouldn't have been learned from Scottish
accents, however: Scots tend to exaggerate tone much more than the
English do.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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