hard sounds
Marissa Polsky
Polsky at AMERICANCOUNCILS.ORG
Wed Mar 17 19:43:00 UTC 2004
This conversation reminds me of my favorite episode of the ever-popular Simpsons. If anyone gets a chance to record it, it is priceless...When Lisa gets lost in Springfield, she asks two Russians playing chess where she is but gets startled when they yell at her. The subtitles however are the Russians kindly giving her directions.
Marissa Polsky
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>>> erichsteffen at GMX.CH 03/17/04 02:25PM >>>
thanx alot to everybody for the good inputs. i ll try to figure out a
consens and look foreward to understand the arguments of the different parties.
greetings
erich steffen>
I wonder if Mr. Steffen was not, perhaps, referring to the ways in which
> many consonants are articulated in Russian, rather than to the linguistic
> category of hard and soft. What I mean (and what I think Mr. Steffen
meant)
> is that consonants -- especially the dentals and some of the labials (not
P,
> of course) -- are pronounced with a lot more "plosion" in Russian than
> they are in English, German and French. (My linguistic training is,
> admittedly, "§é§Ö§Þ§å-§ß§Ú§Ò§å§Õ§î §Ú §Ü§Ñ§Ü-§ß§Ú§Ò§å§Õ§î," and I
anticipate a firm
> correction from the real linguists out there. But here goes.) The hard
> (linguistically) dentals in Russian SOUND hard (now I'm using the word
> non-linguistically), and therefore subjectively maybe aggressive, because
they're
> articulated much farther back in the mouth (closer to the O position than
the
> I position), and the lower jaw is dropped much lower.
>
> The result is a very different, more "aggressive" sound, at least to my
> ear. One of the "tells" of an Anglophone accent in Russian is the delicate
> way we pronounce our d's, t's, and v's, especially the American tendency
to
> "tongue flap" consonants (when we say butter, for instance). The same
holds
> true for French, I think -- perhaps even more so than English, French is a
> language that dawdles on its vowels and swallows its consonants. Russian
> does just the opposite. The net effect (and this is subjective) is that
> Russian sounds HARD and, therefore, aggressive.
>
> As proof for all this subjectiveness: When I've talked to non-Russian
> speakers, they always say that Russians (especially males) sound "angry"
when
> they speak. Part of that is the intonational pattern, but part of it is
the
> way Russians articulate their consonants. (Anecdotally, my cat goes crazy
> when I speak Russian around the house -- she actually bats at my mouth and
> I end up locking her in a closet until my guests leave. Clearly,
Anglophone
> felines also perceive Russian's strangeness.)
>
>
> mad
> ()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
> Dr. Michael A. Denner
> Russian Studies Program
> Stetson University
> Campus Box 8361
> DeLand, FL 32724
> 386.822.7381 (department)
> 386.822.7265 (direct line)
> 386.822.7380 (fax)
> http://www.stetson.edu/~mdenner
> http://russianpoetry.net
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Miriam Margala [mailto:miriam at LING.ROCHESTER.EDU]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 1:11 PM
> To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] hard sounds
>
> I think Benjamin Rifkin gave a good response. It's tricky to associate
> purely linguistic terms with any other phenomena though I think I sort
> of know what you're trying to express,
>
> best
>
> Miriam Margala
> Dept. of English, Dept. of Linguistics
> University of Rochester
> Rochester
> New York 14627
> USA
>
> Edil Legno wrote:
>
> >I think I didn't express very well my ideas. One thing is the harder mode
> of pronunciation and another the sign of lacking in education. Tbe
> geographical part which is very close to Bratislava is called Zahorie.From
here
> and from Trnava are usually the people which pronounce all sounds
> di-ti-ni-li and de-te-ne-le only in hard mode.As those people (in the
past)were
> >usually peasants and very simple persons ,with no education,
> >the way how they pronounce these sounds - made a bigger mark on the
> difference between the so-called people with education and non. They were
a
> lot of jokes on the past communist governers because of their hard mode
of
> pronunciation. Someone of those past com.politics had a very low level of
> education (only evening schools) .The correct pronunciation of some
> words:peasant is sedliak,they pronounce it like "sedlak". the word "kde"
with
> soft-de- they pronounce it only with hard - de-. Word Bratislava - hard
-ti-is
> pronounced only by foreigners and "zahoraci".Educated Slovak NEVER will
> >pronounce it that way.That's why it's considered just a lacking in
> education.
> >
> >Best wishes
> >Katar *na Peitlov ¤,Ph.Dr.
> >
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