Friday, 10 December 2010
wintry
The second sleep-inhibiting pronunciation (yesterday’s blog) turned out not to be as odd as I at first assumed.
The shipping forecast, with its hypnotic litany warning of gales in Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Forties, Cromarty, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight… — the Norwegians spell the name of their island Utsira, which is also what you will find in LPD, rather than Utsire — was well under way when the announcer started forecasting ˈwɪntəri showers. Hold on a minute, ˈwɪntəri? Surely this word is spelt wintry, so you would no more pronounce it ˈwɪntəri than you would pronounce angry as ˈæŋɡəri? We say ˈwɪntri, don’t we?
The point at issue is the treatment of fossilized, lexicalized cases of compression. Recall that among the candidates for compression (= loss of a syllable) are those sequences where ə is followed by r or l plus a weak vowel. The schwa can be lost (arguably via an intermediate stage involving a syllabic consonant, but we can ignore that here), reducing by one the number of syllables in the word.
So, for example, we have the option of saying ˈdʒenrəl rather than ˈdʒenərəl general, or ˈpræktɪkli rather than ˈpræktɪkəli practically.
The compression rule is, however, very variable in its application.
It turns out, though, that dictionaries reckon I’m wrong. The Concise Oxford and LDOCE both show wintry with the alternative spelling wintery, with the possibility of a trisyllabic pronunciation. So that’s alright (or all right), then.
For what it’s worth, the OED has the spelling wintry from Spencer (1590) onwards, but wintery only from the nineteenth century.
The shipping forecast, with its hypnotic litany warning of gales in Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Forties, Cromarty, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight… — the Norwegians spell the name of their island Utsira, which is also what you will find in LPD, rather than Utsire — was well under way when the announcer started forecasting ˈwɪntəri showers. Hold on a minute, ˈwɪntəri? Surely this word is spelt wintry, so you would no more pronounce it ˈwɪntəri than you would pronounce angry as ˈæŋɡəri? We say ˈwɪntri, don’t we?
The point at issue is the treatment of fossilized, lexicalized cases of compression. Recall that among the candidates for compression (= loss of a syllable) are those sequences where ə is followed by r or l plus a weak vowel. The schwa can be lost (arguably via an intermediate stage involving a syllabic consonant, but we can ignore that here), reducing by one the number of syllables in the word.
So, for example, we have the option of saying ˈdʒenrəl rather than ˈdʒenərəl general, or ˈpræktɪkli rather than ˈpræktɪkəli practically.
The compression rule is, however, very variable in its application.
- Americans don’t apply it as much as Brits do: so, for example, federal seems usually to be ˈfedərəl in AmE but ˈfedrəl in BrE.
- In many words it is variable. You can say history as ˈhɪstəri or as ˈhɪstri, or at least I can.
- Some words that meet its structural description nevertheless resist it. So cookery remains ˈkʊkəri in isolation (though you might get ˈkʊkri in BrE cookery book).
- Some words undergo compression always, or nearly always. We say ˈevri every not ?*ˈevəri. Do you ever pronounce separately as four syllables? I don’t think I do. What about basically?
- There are some words in which compression is so well established that it is shown in spelling. In pronunciation it is obligatory. A case in point is angry, mentioned above, which morphologically and historically is obviously anger plus -y. Another is remembrance, clearly remember plus -ance, but pronounced as three syllables not four. Yet another is simply, the disyllabic output of disyllabic simple plus -ly.
It turns out, though, that dictionaries reckon I’m wrong. The Concise Oxford and LDOCE both show wintry with the alternative spelling wintery, with the possibility of a trisyllabic pronunciation. So that’s alright (or all right), then.
For what it’s worth, the OED has the spelling wintry from Spencer (1590) onwards, but wintery only from the nineteenth century.
Thursday, 9 December 2010
Potidaea
As I prepare to drift off to sleep at night my bedside radio is tuned to BBC R4. After the midnight news comes the regular soothing sequence of Book of the Week, then Sailing By, then the shipping forecast… I’m usually deep in slumber by now.
Except when I am jerked awake by an interesting or unusual pronunciation. It happened twice last night.
The current Book of the Week is The Hemlock Cup, written and read by Bettany Hughes. It is a historical account of Socrates’s life in ancient Athens. Last night we heard how the philosopher, carrying out his citizen’s duty as a hoplite in the Athenian army, fought at the battle of Potidaea (Ancient Greek Ποτίδαια). Ms Hughes pronounced this name, several times, as ˌpɒtɪˈdeɪə.
But when I was at school it was ˌpɒtɪˈdiːə. Agh! the creeping non-classical-Greek, non-classical-Latin, non-English rendering of Greek αι, Latin ae as eɪ instead of classical aɪ or English post-Great-Vowel-Shift iː again! We’re used to this in vertebrae by now, but how far is it going to go? Are we going to start calling Caesar ˈseɪzə? Bettany Hughes is a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, part of the University of London, and well known as a historian, author and broadcaster. How does she pronounce Aegean, Aesop, Mycenae, Thermopylae? I only ask.
OK, non-classical words are different: Disraeli, Gaelic, maelstrom have eɪ.
I’ll keep the second sleep-inhibiting shock for tomorrow.
Except when I am jerked awake by an interesting or unusual pronunciation. It happened twice last night.
The current Book of the Week is The Hemlock Cup, written and read by Bettany Hughes. It is a historical account of Socrates’s life in ancient Athens. Last night we heard how the philosopher, carrying out his citizen’s duty as a hoplite in the Athenian army, fought at the battle of Potidaea (Ancient Greek Ποτίδαια). Ms Hughes pronounced this name, several times, as ˌpɒtɪˈdeɪə.
But when I was at school it was ˌpɒtɪˈdiːə. Agh! the creeping non-classical-Greek, non-classical-Latin, non-English rendering of Greek αι, Latin ae as eɪ instead of classical aɪ or English post-Great-Vowel-Shift iː again! We’re used to this in vertebrae by now, but how far is it going to go? Are we going to start calling Caesar ˈseɪzə? Bettany Hughes is a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, part of the University of London, and well known as a historian, author and broadcaster. How does she pronounce Aegean, Aesop, Mycenae, Thermopylae? I only ask.
OK, non-classical words are different: Disraeli, Gaelic, maelstrom have eɪ.
I’ll keep the second sleep-inhibiting shock for tomorrow.
Wednesday, 8 December 2010
the myth of maɨθ
Commenting on yesterday’s blog, the prolific Anonymous complained
Strange, isn’t it? Yet an awful lot of people seem convinced that both she and her son Charles do just that. Here’s Steve Bell again, in today’s Guardian.
A kynecil hice in the grinds (a council house in the grounds)? Really?
YouTube can be our witness that Charles’s MOUTH vowel is usually pretty unremarkable. Here he is
Perhaps they have been laughed out of it. A more likely scenario might be that they tend to pronounce aɨ just very occasionally, say one time in thirty or forty — and the popular stereotype has seized on this rare variant as being typical and pervasive.
You know, if you listen to the Queen (plenty of clips on YouTube), she does not pronounce "about" as abite. Where did this idea ever come from? I've even watched the old videos and she didn't do it then either.
Strange, isn’t it? Yet an awful lot of people seem convinced that both she and her son Charles do just that. Here’s Steve Bell again, in today’s Guardian.
A kynecil hice in the grinds (a council house in the grounds)? Really?
YouTube can be our witness that Charles’s MOUTH vowel is usually pretty unremarkable. Here he is
- when young, in 1969. Notice how he says thousand at 1:24 and down, round, out at 1:32-1:39; and
- just a few years ago, in 2006. Listen for out at 0:43 and 0:50, then a thousand pounds at 1:17.
Perhaps they have been laughed out of it. A more likely scenario might be that they tend to pronounce aɨ just very occasionally, say one time in thirty or forty — and the popular stereotype has seized on this rare variant as being typical and pervasive.
Tuesday, 7 December 2010
t-to-r
Our observations about the Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell’s confusion of Teesside and Tyneside (blog, 2 Dec.) have not gone unnoticed. (Click cartoon to enlarge.)
“Knoowas” for ‘knows’ represents the northern east-coast opening diphthong for GOAT, ʊɔ.
“Shooroop” for ‘shut up’ represents ʃʊrʊp. This has not only the familiar northern use of ʊ in STRUT words, but also the outcome of what I call the “t-to-r rule” (AofE p. 370).I don’t think there has been much discussion of this process in the literature. My impression is that it extends from somewhere in the English midlands (Coventry or thereabouts) up to the Scottish border and that it is always stigmatized. Unlike American t-voicing (tapping, ‘flapping’), it operates only after short vowels.
It features in Cilla Black’s catchphrase a lorra lorra laffs ‘a lot of laughs’.
“Knoowas” for ‘knows’ represents the northern east-coast opening diphthong for GOAT, ʊɔ.
“Shooroop” for ‘shut up’ represents ʃʊrʊp. This has not only the familiar northern use of ʊ in STRUT words, but also the outcome of what I call the “t-to-r rule” (AofE p. 370).I don’t think there has been much discussion of this process in the literature. My impression is that it extends from somewhere in the English midlands (Coventry or thereabouts) up to the Scottish border and that it is always stigmatized. Unlike American t-voicing (tapping, ‘flapping’), it operates only after short vowels.
It features in Cilla Black’s catchphrase a lorra lorra laffs ‘a lot of laughs’.
Monday, 6 December 2010
Indian English
When my Accents of English came out nearly thirty years ago, more than one person told me they thought that the last chapter (ch. 9, ‘The Imperial Legacy’) was the weakest. So I was interested to see the publication of a new book in the EUP Dialects of English series, entitled Indian English. It is by Pingali Sailaja of the University of Hyderabad, and contains a substantial chapter on pronunciation.
Sailaja makes a useful distinction between Standard Indian English Pronunciation (SIEP) and various kinds of non-standard pronunciation strongly influenced by the phonetics of the speaker’s L1. On the question of rhoticity, for example, where I wrongly said that “most speakers have a more or less fully rhotic pronunciation” (p. 629), this author asserts that SIEP is non-rhotic, but “most non-standard varieties of IE are rhotic”, although “there are those whose speech would be somewhere in the middle of the cline but they may still have non-rhotic speech” (p. 20). So(削除) he (削除ここまで) she sees nonrhoticity as standard, but rhoticity as a strong marker of non-standard speech.
In Indian English p t k are well-known to be unaspirated. With the exception of Tamil, Indian languages have a phonemic opposition between aspirated and unaspirated plosives. This is exploited for the voiceless th sound: we regularly get aspirated t̪h where other varieties of English have θ. (Indian languages have no dental fricatives, nor usually does SIEP: “the sound /θ/ is sometimes articulated in SIEP but /ð/ is almost completely missing”.) If you hear a speaker of SIEP pronounce thing as t̪ɪŋ rather than as the usual Indian t̪hɪŋ, that probably means he or she is a speaker of Tamil.
Sailaja points out that if the aspiration of voiceless th were due purely to the influence of spelling we might expect d̪ɦ as the counterpart of ð: but in words such as this, mother, bathe we in fact get plain d̪. Then again, though, we do get ɦ in ghastly, ghost and also in John and sometimes in why wɦaɪ, which must certainly be due to the spelling.
Our stereotype of Indian English (or my stereotype, at least) has v and w merged as ʋ, with no distinction between vet and wet. Sailaja asserts, however, that “the distinction is maintained in SIEP”.(削除) He (削除ここまで) She thinks of this as a spelling-based distinction, which is reasonable — though it’s not how we core English speakers think of it, and not how it arose historically. Non-standard varieties of IE do not maintain the distinction.
And so finally to linking and intrusive r. The Indians are different from the English.
Sailaja makes a useful distinction between Standard Indian English Pronunciation (SIEP) and various kinds of non-standard pronunciation strongly influenced by the phonetics of the speaker’s L1. On the question of rhoticity, for example, where I wrongly said that “most speakers have a more or less fully rhotic pronunciation” (p. 629), this author asserts that SIEP is non-rhotic, but “most non-standard varieties of IE are rhotic”, although “there are those whose speech would be somewhere in the middle of the cline but they may still have non-rhotic speech” (p. 20). So
In Indian English p t k are well-known to be unaspirated. With the exception of Tamil, Indian languages have a phonemic opposition between aspirated and unaspirated plosives. This is exploited for the voiceless th sound: we regularly get aspirated t̪h where other varieties of English have θ. (Indian languages have no dental fricatives, nor usually does SIEP: “the sound /θ/ is sometimes articulated in SIEP but /ð/ is almost completely missing”.) If you hear a speaker of SIEP pronounce thing as t̪ɪŋ rather than as the usual Indian t̪hɪŋ, that probably means he or she is a speaker of Tamil.
Sailaja points out that if the aspiration of voiceless th were due purely to the influence of spelling we might expect d̪ɦ as the counterpart of ð: but in words such as this, mother, bathe we in fact get plain d̪. Then again, though, we do get ɦ in ghastly, ghost and also in John and sometimes in why wɦaɪ, which must certainly be due to the spelling.
Our stereotype of Indian English (or my stereotype, at least) has v and w merged as ʋ, with no distinction between vet and wet. Sailaja asserts, however, that “the distinction is maintained in SIEP”.
The advertisement for a recent Hindi film that says ‘villager, visionary, winner’ is obviously meant to be alliterative.
And so finally to linking and intrusive r. The Indians are different from the English.
Friday, 3 December 2010
comment is free
Today’s Guardian newspaper carries a feature headed “After the disclosure that Tories were worried by George Osborne’s voice, readers discuss how their own accents were shaped”.
Although we are told “To see these articles in full and to join the debate go to guardian.co.uk/commentisfree” I have not yet been able to find them on the website, which does nevertheless contain hundreds of readers’ gripes about this or that pronunciation (or in some cases, this or that vocabulary item or choice of words, which people seem to find difficult to distinguish from pronunciation).
With no access to phonetic symbols and probably no knowledge of phonetic transcription, contributors have some difficulty in explaining exactly what accent features they are referring to. They also fail to recognize that every accent contains within itself stylistic variants appropriate for different circumstances. (You can speak formal RP, or colloquial RP, or something between the two. Same with Geordie, Scouse, Mancunian or Brummie.)
So Simon Gilman says
By “the royal family” he must mean the Queen. Comparing her speech successively with that of Prince Charles, Princess Di, and Prince Harry, you see what a long way the royal family’s pronunciation has moved over the years.
Sean David Usher wrote
Andrew Dunn says
Although we are told “To see these articles in full and to join the debate go to guardian.co.uk/commentisfree” I have not yet been able to find them on the website, which does nevertheless contain hundreds of readers’ gripes about this or that pronunciation (or in some cases, this or that vocabulary item or choice of words, which people seem to find difficult to distinguish from pronunciation).
With no access to phonetic symbols and probably no knowledge of phonetic transcription, contributors have some difficulty in explaining exactly what accent features they are referring to. They also fail to recognize that every accent contains within itself stylistic variants appropriate for different circumstances. (You can speak formal RP, or colloquial RP, or something between the two. Same with Geordie, Scouse, Mancunian or Brummie.)
So Simon Gilman says
In the 1960s, there were two accents common to our family. One we used among one another [sic], and the other we used with friends, colleagues, on the telephone and even to some relatives. These were two versions of the very same accent: received pronunciation, RP, once known as “BBC English”. The public version was akin to the accent you hear in British films of the 1940s, or as spoken by the royal family — my sisters my sisters, my brother and I would hoot when our mother answered the phone with “Air, hair lair”) (“oh – hello”). … My own London living has changed my RP to something even less extreme, following the “Estuarine” version exemplified by Tony Blair’s “the peopoo’s princess”.
By “the royal family” he must mean the Queen. Comparing her speech successively with that of Prince Charles, Princess Di, and Prince Harry, you see what a long way the royal family’s pronunciation has moved over the years.
Sean David Usher wrote
My accent is a Sunderland one, often referred to as mackem: to most people in the south it sounds like geordie (the Newcastle accent) but it is different. Some of the noticeable differences in pronunciation can be heard in these words: film pronounced “fillem”, school pronounced “schoo-el” and town with the emphasis on the “ow”. You know is “ya nar”, and a common phrase is “canny for a lad” — which is my dad’s answer to any request about his health and wellbeing. …As for what he means by
town with the emphasis on the “ow”your guess is as good as mine.
Andrew Dunn says
Originally from Glossop, I inherited my accent from family, friends and the wider area. It’s not quite Mancunian, yet not Yorkshire either… At university in Edinburgh I was pigeonholed as one of the “acceptable” English — it was Thatcher and the long-vowelled people from the south who were the enemy. … My accent became increasingly “Scotticised”, as a result of most of my friends being Scots. I found myself using lowlands vernacular more and more often, ken? …
Thursday, 2 December 2010
Geordie royalty
The Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell is currently exploring the pretty conceit that our royal family have a secret double life as a stereotypically lower-class couple. Here they are as Cockneys, discussing whether to change the name of the House of Windsor. (full size here)
Showing pronunciation through ad hoc misspelling is always a bit hit-or-miss. The Cockney MOUTH vowel may be a monophthongal [aː], but it is never [ɑː], so that (as far as I know) ’ouse is not a genuine homophone of arse.
Yesterday they decided to move to the northeast of England and become the “Ahse of Teesside” — though I must say this looks more like Tyneside (Newcastle) than Teesside (Middlesbrough). (full size here)The sporadic pronunciation of the GOAT vowel as [ɵː], which sounds passably like RP NURSE, is a striking characteristic of a Northumbrian accent. (Only a few days ago a phonetic friend of mine who lives in Morpeth was joking about the heavy “snur” that has fallen.)
The Tyneside accent, aka Geordie, has been in the news recently because of the singer and television personality Cheryl Cole. She is one of the judges on the wildly popular talent show The X Factor, and there is talk now of an American version of the show. But will Americans be able to cope with her pronunciation of English?
If you don’t know what Cheryl sounds like and would like to know, here she is being interviewed by Piers Morgan.
Will American audiences be fazed by such things as drɔːr ə lɛɪn draw a line, fɛɪnd ðə tɛɪm find the time, kɑːnt koʊp wɪð ɪt (very back ɑː, caricatured as corn't in the cartoon) can’t cope with it, jə skrʊfs ən jər ʊɡz your scruffs and your Uggs? Or by the frequent low-accent-high-level-tail declarative intonation pattern?
Showing pronunciation through ad hoc misspelling is always a bit hit-or-miss. The Cockney MOUTH vowel may be a monophthongal [aː], but it is never [ɑː], so that (as far as I know) ’ouse is not a genuine homophone of arse.
Yesterday they decided to move to the northeast of England and become the “Ahse of Teesside” — though I must say this looks more like Tyneside (Newcastle) than Teesside (Middlesbrough). (full size here)The sporadic pronunciation of the GOAT vowel as [ɵː], which sounds passably like RP NURSE, is a striking characteristic of a Northumbrian accent. (Only a few days ago a phonetic friend of mine who lives in Morpeth was joking about the heavy “snur” that has fallen.)
The Tyneside accent, aka Geordie, has been in the news recently because of the singer and television personality Cheryl Cole. She is one of the judges on the wildly popular talent show The X Factor, and there is talk now of an American version of the show. But will Americans be able to cope with her pronunciation of English?
From her bouncy, shining mane to the over-sincere pep talks she doles out to her “girls”, Cheryl Cole seems a perfect fit for US television. She has glamour, style and empathy – all the qualities an American audience can understand.
Until, perhaps, she opens her mouth. Cheryl's Geordie accent may be celebrated (in a way) in the UK – this Christmas brings the book Woath It? Coase Ah Am, Pet by Twitter's @CherylKerl – but there are worries that some of the X Factor judge’s pearls of wisdom might get slightly lost in translation in America. … Currently it's Vernon Kay’s broad Bolton burr that is mystifying the Americans – viewers of ABC’s Skating with the Stars have complained that he is difficult to understand. And that despite American viewers having years and years of Daphne’s faux “Manchester” accent in Frasier.
If you don’t know what Cheryl sounds like and would like to know, here she is being interviewed by Piers Morgan.
Will American audiences be fazed by such things as drɔːr ə lɛɪn draw a line, fɛɪnd ðə tɛɪm find the time, kɑːnt koʊp wɪð ɪt (very back ɑː, caricatured as corn't in the cartoon) can’t cope with it, jə skrʊfs ən jər ʊɡz your scruffs and your Uggs? Or by the frequent low-accent-high-level-tail declarative intonation pattern?
Women _ have ¯a hard time of it
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