Re: Subtitutes for English /T/ and /D/

On 17 Jul, 12:46, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 16, 8:37 pm, "Richard Wordingham" <jrw0...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





<jwlaw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1184618982.238706.154190@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Jul 16, 5:41 pm, Oliver Cromm <lispamat...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

* Seán O'Leathlóbhair wrote:
On 16 Jul, 09:21, "John Atkinson" <johna...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<phogl...@xxxxxx> wrote...
Ruud Harmsen <realemailons...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Many people now often use a correct [T] (but not a correct /D/!).
But if they do substitute it bu anything alse, it is by [s], not
[t].
I guess we use mostly [t] and [d] here in Finland. The good old days
when "the" was rendered as "röh" are regrettably gone.

Why do French speakers from France use [s] and [z], while those from
Quebec use [t] and [d]?

Not just the French but also the Spanish.

Even Germans.

I have often wondered why non-natives use [s] and [z] or [t] and [d]
but many natives use [f] and [v]. [s] and [z] or [t] and [d] mark you
as non-native but [f] and [v] might not.

Presumably because to their foreigners' ears, [T] and [f] or [d] and [v]
sound too different. We foreigners don't substitute, we approximate.
Likewise I hear foreigners approximate German ü (/y/) as /u/ or /yu/,
where, from a German perspective, /i/ would be the more natural
replacement.

I recommended /d/ several times as a better alternative to /z/ to
Germans who couldn't do /D/, should I reconsider?

It depends on your objective. If you wish to sound native then
consider using [f] and [v] but an argument against is that these
dialects are not very prestigious. To conform to them you may need to
also drop [h]. I don't know if all dialects which replace [T] with
[f] also drop [h] but the ones that I am familiar with do. If you
can't do [T] and don't want to substitute [f] then I would also
recomend [t], ditto [D] to [d]. Some Irish do that. (Hard to know
which brackets I should be using here.)

The reason for choosing [f v] is that they are acoustically almost
indistinguishable from [T D]. As for non-prestigious dialect, _if_ the
hearer hears the difference, that non-prestigiousness holds for only a
very small and localized audience.

Why a small and localised audience? Do you just mean that at any one
time probably only a few people are listening? That may be true but
over many conversations that few could add up to many.

Speakers of a dialect which uses [T D] usually notice when they hear
the [f v] variety. My impression is that many [T D] speakers regard [f
v] and also dropped [h] forms as undesirable. Maybe they should not
but that does not mean that they do not. I would rarely use my [f v]
accent in a business context though I am tempted when I speak to one
customer who is in the area in which I grew up.

Would you recommend a learner to consider [f v] rather than [t d] or
[s z] if he cannot manage [T D]?

Are there any [f v] accents in the US?

--
Seán Ó Leathlóbhair

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Subtitutes for English /T/ and /D/
    ... > sound too different. ... We foreigners don't substitute, we approximate. ... dialects. ... Fortunately, I am not a teacher, and personally have no trouble ...
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