LL-L "Accents" 2005.02.25 (04) [E]

Fri Feb 25 23:27:53 UTC 2005

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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: Szelog, Mike <Mike.Szelog at citizensbank.com>
Subject: LL-L "Accents" 2005.02.25 (01) [E]

That guttural sound of Dutch "g/ch" is also to be found in Welsh - don't get
me wrong, I love the sound of Welsh, but I think that sound in Welsh (spelt
'ch' in Welsh)is much more pronounced or "forceful", for lack of a better
way of putting it, than the corresponding way it's pronounced in Dutch -
maybe it's just because I'm a bit more used to hearing it than Welsh - have
a listed to some Welsh if you can - the sound sticks out like a sore thumb;
almost as if they needed something to shock the listener out of the rest of
the normal very melodic sounds of the language!

Mike S
Manchester, NH - USA

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From: Brooks, Mark <mark.brooks at twc.state.tx.us>
Subject: LL-L "Accents" 2005.02.25 (01) [E]

Ah, now it gets good!  I can't resist asking about this.

Ingmar wrote [ro:ut']:
"In the other Southern (South Western) varieties of Zeeland (NL) and
Flanders (Belgium), the g/ch have become h: hoed [hut] = D. goed [xut]
'good', heven ["he:v=n] = D. geven ["xe:iv@] 'give' etc.  That sounds quite
soft too."
Okay, is there any blurring of "heeft" and "geeft"?  Sometimes when I'm
talking to people, I'll have to stipulate which [pIn] I mean.  Here in Texas
(and many other places in this country) "pen" and "pin" are pronounced the
same.  So, we'll sometimes have to say, "Do you have a pen? Ink pen, I
mean."  Do the Flemings say anything like "Ik geeft...met g" or "Ik
heeft...met h"?

Mark Brooks

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From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
Subject: Accents

Mark Brooks wrote: “Many years ago I was hitch-hiking around Europe and met
up with a guy my age from Amsterdam.  We went separate ways before getting
to Holland, but he invited me to his house when we would both be there.  I
looked him up and went to visit.  I went to his house and ate dinner there.
I met his sister and another friend.  When they spoke to each other in
Dutch, it seemed all I heard was the g/ch sound.  That was my experience for
all of my visit in Amsterdam.  I met quite a few other Dutch people, because
my friend got me in with the Orange Vrij Staat and I lived in a "gekraakt
huis" for about 6 weeks.  I tried to pick up a little Dutch while I was
there, but I didn't really get very much.  I just remember the difficulty I
had saying something like "Ik heeft hem geen geld gegeven."

Now, fast forward some 30+ years.  I was harkening back to my "glory days"
and I googled the name of one of my "gekraakt huis" huismates.  Whadaya
know?  It came up!  Not only did it come up, but he had his own website, and
he had turned out to be a film director.  I emailed him and we carry on a
correspondence even now.  He came thru Texas a little over a year ago and
stopped by our house.  He was doing a cross-country driving tour with his
daughter who is now about 27 years old.  When I listened to the two of them
talking to each other in Dutch, I hardly heard any of those g/ch sounds.
But, when I watch those news videoclips on De Telegraaf's website, I heard
those g/ch sounds very often.  What gives?  Were they  speaking a two-person
dialect?”

Thanks Mark, for the story. There might be another explanation for the
“sound shift”. Many of the young people in the “krakers community” prided
themselves of being different than other Dutch people. I could imagine that
speaking with an exaggerated Amsterdam accent was part of that scene. Later
when your friend found it expedient he returned to a less offensive form of
Dutch. It used to be that the way you spoke Dutch was an indication of which
class you belonged to. ( It still is, but much less so ) The use of language
as a socio-political statement is nothing new. Many educated black people
speak proper American English at work, but revert to ebonics when they are
in the “hood”. My brother spoke with a pronounced “Utrecht” accent when he
was a teenager even though we spoke ABN at home. ( It drove my mother
crazy ) and my own son went through a period when he insisted on saying “Me
and my friends, or me and Danny” even though he knew better. Once he stopped
skateboarding, he reverted to proper English. And so it goes…. Groetjes,
Jacqueline

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From: Ian James Parsley <ian at ianjamesparsley.net>
Subject: Accents

Gary,

Maybe you missed my post, or maybe I didn't
communicate my point properly.

My point was that there is strong evidence that says
the Northern Ireland accent is regarded as blunt or
unpleasant or whatever because of the reputation of
Northern Ireland itself - long associated with
worker's ethic and seriousness, it then of course
became associated with civil conflict and terrorism.
Studies do show that people will instinctively draw a
parallel on hearing the accent between the accent and
the speaker's background in a region with a negative
reputation.

Even anecdotal evidence shows this. I phoned someone
in Lincolnshire once who knew only that I was from
'Ireland' and immediately said 'Oh I do love your
accent' - I would argue this is because she associated
it with 'Ireland' rather than specifically 'Northern
Ireland'. (Even though the distinction is quite clear
between Northern and Southern just as in England,
people are also inclined to assign an accent to a
label regardless of what it actually sounds like, i.e.
she already know I was from 'Ireland' therefore
assumed I had an 'Irish' accent.)

Hope that answers the question in some way, but I
should make the disclaimer that this in no way a field
of expertise for me!

Best wishes,
Ian.

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

Folks,

I'm afraid I'm having to harp on this ... trying to come up with some sort
of summary.

>From what I keep hearing from you I am tempted to conclude, or to suggest
once again, that there is wide-spread aversion to speech sound production
that involves the throat.  I am fairly confident that this is not
coincidental but has something to do with our preference for keeping speech
sounds apart from sounds that to the uniniated's ears signal
non-speech-related physical functions and distress, none of which is
considered appealing -- such as clearing one's throat, coughing, choking,
wretching and vomiting.

Postvelar/uvular fricatives are probably the most striking examples; they
are particularly disliked by listeners in whose native languages such sounds
are absent, and the raspier they sound the less appealing they are to them.

Another example is glottalization. Many of the world's languages have
glottalized series of consonants, consonants that are accompanied either by
glottal constriction or by a glottal stop (i.e., a stop pronounced with a
simultaneous glottal stop).  Examples are the Semitic varieties (with the
exception of Europeanized Maltese and Standard Hebrew, e.g., Arabic ح, ص, ض,
ط, ظ), several Caucasian languages and numerous languages throughout the
Americas.  I have never found this unpleasant to listen to (probably because
in my case fascination has overridden all other aspects).  However, quite a
few people have told me that they find it very unpleasant, associating
particularly the glottal constriction sounds with wretching sounds.

This may well be related to wide-spread dislike of word-final glottal stops;
as in many English and Scots varieties where _-t_ becomes a glottal stop,
apparently also known in some Gaelic varieties.  It occurs very frequently
in Eastern and Southeastern Asia, is particularly prevalent in the Malayic
languages (the numerous languages of Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines
and Taiwan).  Apparently, it is a step farther in the development from final
stops to unreleased final stops, the last step before deletion of final
stops (a development that can be clearly seen among the Chinese languages,
such as in (ignoring tones) 鐵 [thi(@)t] > [thi(@)t?] > [thi(@)?] > [thie]
'iron', 貼 [thi(@)p] > [thi(@)p?] > [thi(@)?] > [thie] 'to paste', and 逖
[thik] > [thik?] > [thi?] > [thi] 'distant'.  Many people have told me that
they like Standard Mandarin best among Chinese varieties because it does not
have those final stops that make the other varieties sound "choppy," "stuck
in the throat" or "strangled."

Again, this is related to an apparently universal auditory preference for
CV-type syllables (thus preference for final sonorants to final stops).
Probably even deeper, there seems to be universal preference for vowels to
consonants, especially to stops.  This can be seen by looking at the two
extremes: the indigenous languages of the American Pacific Northwest
(especially the Salishan varieties) and also many languages of the Caucasus
have very extensive vowel devoicing and vowel deletion and thus a prevalence
of consonant clusters, including glottalized stops, while at the other end
of the spectrum the Polynesian languages, foremost Hawai'ian, have a
prevalence of vowels because they have simplied consonant systems and have
"deleted" many consonants.  I have noticed that novices to these languages
by far prefer the latter to the former.  Vowels are perceived as
"melodious," most likely because they are continuants, while consonants are
produced by means of various types of obstruction.  "Obstruction" is
apparently not a good thing, especially if it occurs in one's throat.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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