<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">=========================================================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 16 June 2008 - Volume 02<br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
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<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <<a href="mailto:ingmar.roerdinkholder@WORLDONLINE.NL">ingmar.roerdinkholder@WORLDONLINE.NL</a>></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2008.06.15 (05) [E]</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
But I didn't say that the spread of uvular R was due to Jewish</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
transmission, only that the Jews were almost without exception uvular r</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
speakers in non uvular environment, such as the Pre War Netherlands,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
arabic countries, Italia, Russia, Poland etc.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Isn't it a bit strange to suppose that e.g. Yiddish would be influenced</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
more by French pronunciation than other European languages at this point?</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
And supposing the fact that Maghribi Jews (Morocco, Algeria, Tunesia) also</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
used the uvular R is from French too?</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
So, why didn't the latter have [y] for [u] then, too, or [Z] for [dZ] in</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Algeria, or nasal vowels?</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Maybe the original Sephardic Jews from Portugal and Spain had an uvular R</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
too, still back from Palestine, when they went to the Maghreb. Present day</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Portuguese has uvular R initially and when geminated, it almost sounds</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
like Spanish jota.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Btw I noticed that there is an interesting parallel between Spanish j =</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
[x] in Spain and [h] in Latin America, and Portuguese initial/double r [x]</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
in Portugal and [h] in Brasil.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Ingmar</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><div style="margin-left: 40px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Ingmar,<br><br>
I would be surprised if the spread of uvular /r/ were due to Jewish<br>
transmission (at least in place other than the Netherlands). How would a<br>
largely despised minority considered "foreigner" be able to do so?<br><br>
Most Ashkenazi Jews in the Netherlands arrived relatively late and came<br>
from<br>
German- and French-speaking parts, aside from East Europeans many of them<br>
used uvular /r/ in Yiddish.<br><br>
I believe that the leveling of /r/ and *ghayn* in North African Jewish<br>
Arabic is due to French-inspired "affectation" in French colonies. (Most<br>
new<br>
North African immigrants I met in Israel tried their best to pass as<br>
French.) Jews of Egypt (once a British colony) do not use a uvular sound<br>
for<br>
/r/.<br><br>
The uvular articulation of /r/ in Modern Hebrew clearly belongs to strong<br>
European adstrata.<br><br>
The voiced uvular fricative is most definitely not associated with /r/ in<br>
the Semitic languages. In pre-modern Hebrew and in Judeo-Aramaic it is the<br>
pronunciation of "soft" *gimel* (×'), in non-Jewish Aramaic with "soft" *<br>
gamal* (Ü"), in Arabic with *ghayn* (غ), and in Maltese it doesn't seem to<br>
exist.<br><br>
I rather think that the spread of uvular /r/ in Europe emanated from French<br>
via the French craze in the 17th and 18th centuries.<br><br>
Regards,<br>
Reinhard/Ron<br></div>
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Travis Bemann</span> <span class="lDACoc"><<a href="mailto:tabemann@gmail.com">tabemann@gmail.com</a>><br>
Subject: </span>LL-L "Phonology" 2008.06.15 (07) [E]<br><br></span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">On that note, the English dialect here in Milwaukee very commonly uses</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
a uvular approximant for /r/ (and sometimes a weak voiced uvular</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
fricative), except after coronals, where it uses a postalveolar</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
approximant more typical of North American English dialects. Of</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
course, this is not the addition of any new phonemes but rather the</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
wholesale replacement of the original NAE realization of /r/ in most</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
positions. For myself, a uvular approximant is the default rhotic</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
except after coronals, even though I am not sure if it is quite as</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
consistent amongst everyone here (as there are greatly varying levels</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
of General American influence here). As such is a very atypical</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
feature for an NAE dialect, but at the same time I have heard of the</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
use of uvular rhotics being encountered sporadically over a relatively</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
wide area of the US, which makes me think that it very likely is a</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
substratum feature (particularly considering the substrata present in</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
this area).</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(91, 16, 148);">Paul Finlow-Bates</span> <span class="lDACoc"><<a href="mailto:wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk">wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk</a>></span><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);"></span><span class="lDACoc"><br>
Subject: </span>LL-L "Phonology" 2008.06.15 (07) [E]<br></span><p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Ron wrote:</p>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="Ih2E3d">I rather think that the spread of uvular /r/ in Europe emanated from French via the French craze in the 17th and 18th centuries.<br><br></div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Elsie
can probably put me sraight, but Transvalers often used to tell me that
Cape Afrikaans has its uvular /r/ because "they like to think they're
French".
</span>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Paul Finlow-Bates</p><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);">Luc Hellinckx</span> <span class="lDACoc"><<a href="mailto:luc.hellinckx@gmail.com">luc.hellinckx@gmail.com</a>></span><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);"></span><span class="lDACoc"><br>
Subject: </span>LL-L "Phonology"<br><br></span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Beste Ron,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
You wrote:</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Well, how about areal features then? A linguistic feature (which can be
a sound) spreads over a certain geographic area irrespective of
boundaries between languages and language families. Striking examples
outside Europe are the use of glottalized stop consonants from Alaska
to Northern California and the affricate /tɬ/ (the affricate equivalent
of Welsh "ll") occurring uninterruptedly in unrelated languages from
Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, and in southeastern Asia where unrelated
languages share ingressive labials and unreleased final stops.<br>
<br>
Areal features spread through contacts and multilingualism, including intermarriage.<br>
<br>
Any feature can be preserved as a part of a substratum or it can be
introduced as a part of an adstratum, and this includes articulation.<br>
<br>
An example of feature preservation is the case of tonality in
peripheral Bengali dialects with Tibeto-Burman substrata. Conversely,
an example of feature loss is the absence of tones in Mandarin and
Tibetan varieties that overlap with Altaic languages in Western China.<br>
<br>
Acquisition of features very often involves prestige, and these days
much of that is being promoted by formal education and the mass media.
People will switch to a different sort of articulation of a phoneme if
this is considered desirable. How else would you explain the rapid
spread of the uvular /r/ in the Netherlands, especially in the Randstad
area, the "happenin' place"? How else would you explain that my mother
and her children belonged to the vanguard group using the uvular /r/ in
their place and social class? How else would you explain non-rhoticism
replacing rhoticism in Southern England, as explained by "the other
Paul"? Non-rhoticism became prestigious because it predominated among
Southeastern England's gentry and intelligentsia. In the USA, on the
other land, non-rhoticism in New England, New York and the Southeast is
rapidly giving way to rhoticism, because rhoticism is nationally
predominant and prestigious.<br>
<br>
In 17th- and 18th-century Europe outside France, many members of the
gentry and would-be gentry were so much in love with French that many
of switched to French as a default medium with their like-minded peers.
Some of them even faked French accents when they spoke the actual
languages of their areas. The then prestigious "Saxon" German dialect
of Meissen had or acquired the uvular /r/ at the time. It caught on in
other cities, such as Leipzig and Dresden, also in Berlin, Prussia's
power center in which the (now extinct) local Southeastern Low Saxon
dialects soon gave way to the types of Missingsch (= Meissenisch) we
now know as "Berlinerisch". For a while, the rest of Northern Germany
remained largely Low-Saxon-speaking in rural and semi-rural areas as
well as in lower urban classes. In most places it was only the "better"
social classes that were totally German-centered, and this includes
educators, especially those in tertiary education, in part because
academics were often hired over long distances, and German was the
natural lingua franca in German-centered learning. As I mentioned
before, pretty much all locally raised old people that I knew as a
child in Hamburg still used the apical /r/, even those that could no
longer speak Low Saxon or spoke it poorly. Those using the apical /r/
in Hamburg now are few and far between. All right. I may seem old to
some, but I ain't /that/ old. So we are talking about pretty rapid
spread here.<br>
</blockquote>
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
All with you on this one Ron. This is how the "machine" works indeed.
Call it "prestige", "social promotion", "fashion"...whatever...homo
sapiens is a primate, a copycat after all *s*. What, where and how he
copies is altogether another matter...but copy he will. Even in this
day and age of "free thinkers", "freedom"...and "free" software :-D .
By the way, chaotic, random and eccentric behavior gets copied just as
well.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Not even such a bad thing in my opinion, copying is the best tribute
you can ever make to "the master" (if ever there is one)...in the light
of eternity that is.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Mind you, I know that (some) human beings can do more than this...but
the first stage is always "recognition" and "copying" I think. When
that blueprint has been made, you can try thinking out of the box...but
first there has to be a box, not the other way round :-D .</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Kind greetings,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#888888">
<br>
Luc Hellinckx<br>
</font><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
PS: This is probably a very "continental" point of view.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">