LL-L "Phonology" 2003.06.08 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 08.JUN.2003 (02) * 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: GaidhealdeAlba at aol.com
Subject: Phonology

Lowlanders,

To what extent is the /hw/ sound spread in English and its dialects? Is
it in Scottish dialects of English, and is "wh" pronounced as such in
Scots?

On a broader note, are /hw/ and other /h/ + consonant combinations
widespread in other Lowland languages?

Beannachdan,
Uilleam Stiùbhart

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From: Reply to "Phonology"
Subject: Response to "Language Varieties"

So sorry it’s taken me so long to get back into this thread - been busy!
:-)

Reinhard wrote:

>>A Finnish friend once told me (a long time ago) that it is considered a
>>speech defect among Finnish speakers.  Perhaps long ago some important
>>person in France had this speech defect, and the rest is history ...  :)

Yes, I know one person who has this defect, a native speaker of Spanish
from
Colombia, caused (he claims) by an unusually short sub-lingual frenum,
although in his case he replaced only the /rr/ with the /R/.  Makes
sense to
me.  There’s also an apocryphal story of some French king who had the
same
defect, which prompted his courtiers to emulate him out of sympathy (or
sycophancy, more likely), thus giving rise to the innovation.  Who knows
. .
. ?

>>It is also interesting to note that Iberian Portuguese has the usual
>>apical flap for /r/, except at the beginning of a word or in cases of
>>_rr_ (where Castilian has a strongly trilled and often aspirated /r/),
>>in which case it is pronounced like a "French /r/" in Portuguese.  So
>>you got *both* type in the same language!

My theory about its existence in Portuguese is that it’s a relic of some
pre-Indo-European language which was able to establish itself due to the
fact that the speech area was at the very fringe of the Roman Empire.

Criostir wrote:

>>But the uvular /r/ in Israeli Hebrew is due to recent European
>>influence, certainly did not develop independently.  Most likely, it is
>>derived from a combination of French, German (and Dutch?) and in part
>>Yiddish "accents" of influential European immigrants.  (Yiddish has both
>>apical and uvual /r/, depending on dialects and individual speakers,
>>very interesting since Yiddish used to be surrounded by languages with
>>apical /r/; I assume the uvular type was a spill-over from French via
>>German.)

I agree.

Jim Rader wrote:

>>My assumption has always been that the uvular /r/ of Israeili Hebrew
>>was taken from Eastern Yiddish.  How Yiddish speakers--and not all of
>>them--came on it I don't know for certain, but I believe that most
>>scholars don't think it came from Western Europe.

That’s peculiar, because Eastern Yiddish would have been surrounded my
Slavic languages, none of which uses the uvular /r/.  I cast my vote for
Western European influence.

>>I notice that many (most?) Dutch speakers from
>>the Randstand area, whether they use a uvular or alveolar /r/ initially
>>and medially, have a peculiar sound word-finally that is quite close to
>>American English /r/.  Collins & Mees call it a "prevelar bunched
>>approximant."

Collins & Mees hit it right on the head - that’s a perfect description
of
that sound.

With regard to Vlaams, I believe (but I could be wrong) that almost the
entire speech area uses apical /r/.

One of the things I find really fascinating is that there are some
dialects
of Danish (mostly on Jylland) where they still use the apical /r/.  I
heard
them recently and almost flipped.  Anyone interested can listen to them
here: <http://www.sb.aau.dk/dlh/dialekt/dialekt.html>

God nat, goede nacht, gute Nacht, go?ur nott . . .

Peter Wright
New York, NY

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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2003.06.07 (04) [E]

Ian and Ruud wrote (respectively):
"Going back a bit, I'm inclined to agree that the
English of NZ sounds at least as similar to that of
Southern Africa as it does to that of Australia."

"My impression is, but based on very little exposure to NZ English,
is that it is very similar to AU English, except that is has the
glottal stop for final t (maybe also k, p), like many accents in
Britain, but unlike Australia."

For me, there are similarities in the clipped vowel range in both South
African and NZ English, in some dipthongs, and in some consonants. NZ
English to me shares a kind of phonological abruptness with its South
African counterpart in stark contrast to Australian English which is
more
drawn out in its sounds. No offence in meant to any variety,
incidentally - they all sound wonderful.

It may be that NZ and SA English on one hand and NZ and Australian
English on the other shared similar regional English ancestors; it may
be
that both pairs shared the same linguistic superstrate in the colonial
period; it may be that indigenous influences on NZ and SA English were
similar in sound and function and subtly different in the case of
Australian English.

If we rely on the 'regional English' model as a cause of divergence,
explaining the relative uniformity of Australian English becomes
difficult. If
you look at Australia, each state had a different settlement pattern
from different parts of Britain and Ireland and Europe (even though,
roughly
speaking, the 'national' composition of each state was roughly 25%
Irish, 15% Scottish, 1.5% Welsh and 45% English, with large numbers of
Cornish in S Australia and 'Germans' (undifferentiated) in S Australia
and QLD) - placenames often give this away. Tasmania has Derwent
(Derbyshire), Tamar (Cornwall/Devon), Devonport, Launceston (Cornwall),
Ulverstone (Cumbria) and so on, whereas Western Australia has
Perth (north central Scotland), York, Stirling (central Scotland), and
so on. Surely Tasmania should have a mixture of Derbyshire, Cornish.
Devonian and Cumbrian influences and WA a more Scots-based form?

There are two possibilities as far as I can see: either the original
settlers blended their accents over time to a British standard that
sounded much
like modern Australian and NZ English (the period in question would be
c.1800-1850), based obviously on Southern English and every
subsequent wave of migrants saw their children adopt this standard, or
else one Southern English-based phonological region came to dominate
all others in the new colonies of both Australia and NZ (and, to a
lesser extent, South Africa). That could explain why - consonants aside
- their
is so little Irish influence on Antipodean Englishes, despite the Irish
component being a quarter of Australia and perhaps 15% of NZ. (It must
be
remembered that up to 1870 most of the Irish transportees to Australia
spoke Irish and a little English, although their children would have
spoken English perhaps exclusively.)

A colonial elite who spoke an overpowering Southern English-based
variety which was then adopted by all children of the colony regardless
of
status or regional background, which may have been a descendant of
modern British RP, can be the only explanation as to why NZ and
Australian English (and to a lesser extent SA English) are so similar to
each other, despite such hugely phonologically disparate settler
populations. (A good test of this might be to compare and contrast the
phonology of the Englishes of places like Tristan da Cunha, Pitcairn, St
Helena, Gibraltar (1715), the Falklands and Norfolk Island which were
settled at roughly the same time by the same colonial authorities.)

Which begs the afterthought: if Canada had not been settled by loyalist
refugees from the United States speaking an Atlantic variant which
soon became dominant in 'British North America', would Canadians have
adopted this same 'colonial elite 1800-1850' accent and sound so very
different today?

Food for thought, eh?

Criostóir.

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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2003.06.07 (01) [E]

Gavin Falconer wrote:
"R-liaison in English is a separate issue. I've read that it was
originally the case that it only happened in phrases where there was
historically an /r/, such as "better or worse" — making it not unlike
the
retained /s/ in Standard French liaison — but then spread to other
environments."

In Nottingham English we say 'noss' for 'nurse' and 'wokk' for both
'work' and 'walk'. Curiously, we insert a rhotic in place of [t] in
collapsed
phrases like 'gotta' (from got to) (which becomes 'gorra'). This is a
famously northern feature of English and seems to have begun as an
attempt
to mimick the trilled continental /r/s (including perhaps the uvular
kind) affected by the English aristocracy since Norman days. I once
pronounced a trilled Castillian /r/ to my niece - who was then about
five and monoglot in Nottingham English - and she mimicked it as [d.d],
proving the theory in microcosm. She did the same for initial [r] in a
few Irish Gaelic words - 'ri' (king, pronounced by my niece as 'dyee' or
'dree'
with a rhotic), 'Raghnaill' (Ranald, pronounced by her 'dagnal' or
'daniel'), etc.

In NE we also say 'girrit' for 'give it'. 'Give' is 'gie' in Nottingham
English (as in most northern English variants), but I have no idea were
the rhotic
comes from, except to say that it makes speaking a lot easier and keeps
the tonal flow of the sentence going.

Go raibh maith agat

Criostóir.

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