Re: Catalan dialects and pronunciation
- From: António Marques <m.ap@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 22:58:15 +0100
Ruud Harmsen wrote:
While listening to radio stations created using http://www.pandora.com
I got to know the artist Maria del Mar Bonet. I like the way she
sings. I always thought I didn't particularly like the sound of the
Catalan language (although I hadn't often heard it), but the way she
uses it in her songs I do like it. Maria del Mar Bonet is originally from the island Mallorca. She uses a
lot of shwa-like vowels. This is in accordance with the description I
read in my 1975 Teach Yourself book by Alan Yates: it states that all
<a> and <e> in unstressed syllables become [@] and that unstressed <o>
becomes [u].
I'm no expert, but the best known catalan (central - seaside Catalonia)
sounds not very much unlike portuguese. Not the same, obviously, but the
general feeling isn't very far, probably also due to rythm.
However, when listening to Catalan radio stations like
http://www.onacatalana.com/, this is less clear: some speakers tend to
use more full Castillian-like [a] vowels, even in unstressed position;
others tend more to shwa-like vowels, but nit quite.
Is this a matter of regional accents, or of interference from
Castlillian, among bilingual speakers?
If my understanding is correct, central catalan has a central sound for
unstressed /a e/. Western catalan (viz. valencian) has [a e]; e.g., _les
bruixes_ is [leZ'brujSes] in Valencia, [l@Z'bruS@s] (sounds identical to
portuguese except for the l) in Barcelona.
Utterly ironic that so called 'valencianistes' claim that the spelling
only takes barcelonese into account.
Most of today's Catalan
speakers probably _are_ fully bilingual in Castillian and Catalan? Do
all of them keep the phonetics of the two language fully apart?
Yes and I think so.
--
am
laurus : rhodophyta : brezhoneg : smalltalk : stargate
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