Re: History of French

From: John A Rea (j.rea2_at_insightbb.com)
Date: 09/22/04 

Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 20:06:48 GMT

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> Mxsmanic wrote:
>
>>Herman Rubin writes:
>>
>>
>>>My children could not make the German umlaut sounds until I
>>>told them how. A short explanation and a small amount of
>>>practice sufficed; how many hundreds of tries does a child
>>>have to make to produce a speech sound?
>>
>>I can teach adult learners to produce any sound in English in a few
>>minutes, without an accent.
>
>
> Individual sounds don't have accents.

On more than one occasion I have heard Roman Jakobson use his
"hyperlong" palatal nasal "hesitation" sound: Itl was a most
"individual" sound: and had a "disinctive" accent, as had much
of his speech.

I, too, learned soon enough how to "decode" the speech of my
good friend Qang Phuc Dong, stammer, Glaswegian "substratum"
and all. A brilliant and delightful person, always armed with
a brief case full of offprints with which he was genrous. I
miss him.

                Jack

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Understanding other accents
    ... >language spoken before with an accent different from ours? ... >or unaspirated, that sound still falls, ... >guess this question applies to English as spoken by speakers of other ... and diffcult questions? ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Incomprehensible "English"
    ... English does his speech represent? ... I find the speech of the lady who's interviewing him quite ... understanding what he's saying. ... unexceptional southern English accent. ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: Speaking of terms obscure to outsiders....
    ... Jacey Bedford wrote: ... being the speech of the place where it's supposedly set. ... A lot of trained English actors have already learned their RP English and shed their regional accent before they take their first acting job. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)
  • Re: Nanny really cracks the whip.
    ... to English boarding schools where they had all their Scottish sounds ... sound more poshly English than many real English people. ... hear a very broad accent in the rural areas. ...
    (uk.local.cumbria)
  • Re: WWWOT: the election in Wisconsin
    ... You become acutely aware of how you really sound when you relocate. ... I wonder if she ever made an effort to eliminate any particular accent ... Bush is clearly upper class, ... Obama has a similar accent, but it is overlaid with a lot of rhetorical ...
    (rec.arts.mystery)