LL-L "Phonology=?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=8B=22_?=2013.01.29 (02) [EN]

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 L O W L A N D S - L - 29 January 2013 - Volume 01
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From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2013.01.28 (02) [EN-NL]

Re: pronunciation of Dutch:****

Hello Ron and other Lowlanders,****

Yes, Yesterday it was you, me and quite a few million Dutch speakers, glued
to whatever screen we were using.  Beatrix made good use of “The Queens
Dutch”. What struck me, is how much the ‘royal’ pronunciation has changed
from the time that I listened on the radio; first to Queen Wilhelmina and
then to Queen Juliana. I think it very much reflects the course of the
history of the Netherlands. Where Wilhelmina spoke and breathed the power
of royalty,  the clique around the court plus all its ‘wannabes’ spoke an
exalted kind of Dutch that belonged exclusively to the upper classes. At
that time the language of the upper classes sounded very much as if it was
spoken by a chorus of frustrated opera singers. This changed during
Juliana’s tenor in the palace. She still spoke the lingo, but preferred to
be a Mother Of Many Daughters (Movavedo, her name from the girl scouts
movement) instead of being an example for the burghers of her country. The
upper classes especially around The Hague kept speaking it also. Akin to
the ‘Received Pronunciation’ of the British, it was then called ABN
(Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands); where ‘beschaafd’ meant ‘cultured’. After
WWII there was a distinct change in politics in the Netherlands. Several
Socialist governments made life more bearable for the lower classes and
made it possible for more people to become educated. That brought more
people into prominent positions for whom maintaining the ‘exaltation’ was
not an important point. It also made the speaking of the several dialects
more acceptable. During those years the name of properly pronounced Dutch
changed from ABN to AN (Algemeen Nederlands). Several of my aquaintances
have made the joke that with the removal of that ‘B’ , culture indeed was
lost from our society (and they may have been right).  ****

In 1980  the governments of the Netherlands and Dutch speaking Belgium
embarked on a project called “De Nederlandse Taalunie, an umbrella
organization aimed at lending support to their joint language, which they
dubbed Standaard Nederlands. They were later joined by representatives of
Suriname and the Caribbean Islands of the former Dutch West Indies.  Hence
forward all  Dutch-speaking children were to be educated in this form of
Dutch. I do not know what that form of the language sounds like precisely.
Several of the radio and TV announcers still speak the Dutch I heard around
me when I left the Netherlands in 1959, but there seems to be a greater
tolerance for alternate inflections. We have always pronounced our ‘s’ with
just a tiny amount of ‘slish’. It is possible that you picked up more of
this ‘slishynessI’ (what a delightful word) in last nights’ speach than in
the past, but I did not. However have also noticed amongst the denizens of
‘Underdike’ the sharpening of the pronunciation of the ‘g’ you mentioned.
The sound of the ‘g’of “geel” (yellow) sounds more like the ‘ch’ in acht (
eight). There is also a tendency to increasingly devoice the letters v and
z. This was something you used to hear most often in the poorer
neighborhoods of Amsterdam, but now you hear it everywhere, especially in
the Randstad. Another thing that irritates me is the ‘diphtongisation’ of
several of our vowels. They never were as monophone as the High German
ones, but these days the e-sound sounds more like an e_i, the the long o
sounds like an o_i and the long a like a_e. And then there is the
phenomenon of the Gooise “r”, which makes Laren sound like an extension of
some English suburb. By the same token I hear many people speak with just
the slightest of melodical Brabantish accents. That is not a bad change at
all!****

However the fact remains: Language changes….! ****

Last week I went to see a Dutch movie: De Hel van 63’. It is a story of an
‘Elf Stedentocht’ that was ridden under very inhospitable conditions; like
many of them were I imagine. Many of the roles were cast with Frisian
speaking actors. I was very much aware of the difference between ‘Stads
Fries’ and ‘Plat Fries’, the latter of which was un-understandable to me
unless I saw it in writing. ****

So back to Beatrix’ abdication speech. If you compare the tonal quality of
the language she used twenty five years ago with that we heard yesterday, I
would surmise that somebody told her at some point that the way she spoke
turned lots of her loyal subjects off!. Smart business woman that she was,
she changed. The result sounded *very pleasant*. Willem Alexander, on the
other hand, sounds just like one of the guys.****

I hope this helps a little****

Jacqueline BdJ****

Seattle WA****

PS. Where did you score the phonetic script. I could use one****

** **

s "g" somewhat softly ([ɣ̊]), though not quite as softly ([ɣ]) as most
> Belgians do, while many northern Netherlanders I listen to make no
> distinction between "g" and "ch" ([x̠] ~ [χ]).****

 en's pronunciation of "s" as [s] (as in English and German), while I hear
> many other Dutch speakers pronounce it as retracted [s̠] (tending toward a
> "sh" [ʃ] sound). The native phonemic register of Dutch (like the
> registers of Standard Spain Spanish, Greek, and Finnish) lacks the phoneme
> /š/ ("sh"), which means that /s/ ([s]) and /š/ ([ʃ]) do not need to be
> clearly distinguished. (A German-speaking friend of mine described such
> languages as sounding "*so schischisch*.") By the way, I have never
> encountered this "ambiguous 's'" in native Afrikaans pronunciation, nor in
> Latin American Spanish.****

 ****

Bij voorbaat

bedankt voor uw antwoorden!****

 ****

Groeten,

Reinhard/Ron

Seattle, USA****


 ----------

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

Hi and thanks, Jacqueline!

It's always great to hear and learn from you.

I wrote:


> s "g" somewhat softly ([ɣ̊]), though not quite as softly ([ɣ]) as most
> Belgians do, while many northern Netherlanders I listen to make no
> distinction between "g" and "ch" ([x̠] ~ [χ]).


What I was implying was that to my ears the Queen's pronunciation of /g/ is
somewhat devoiced ([ɣ̊]) and lies somewhere between "ch" (/x/) and Belgian
"soft" (i.e. voiced) /g/ ([ɣ]).

I would like to suggest that this is almost analogous to the Dutch
distinction between "w" ([ʋ]), "v" ([v̥]) and "f" ([f]), and apparently in
some dialects also between "z" ([z]), "z" ([z̥]) and "s" ([s]).

This hypothesis is based on the assumption that there are degrees of
voicelessness.


> PS. Where did you score the phonetic script. I could use one****


There are many ways of accessing such symbols. My favorite online
pick-copy-and-paste tool is Richard Ishida's series of Unicode character
pickers:

http://rishida.net/scripts/pickers/

Click on "IPA" on the right to access the International Phonetic Alphabet.
The neat thing is that the sound is described when you place your cursor on
a symbol.

Groetjes,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA


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