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

On Jul 17, 8:20 am, Seán O'Leathlóbhair <jwlaw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 17 Jul, 12:46, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

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.

I mean that most of the world's English-speakers do not have a
negative opinion of Cockney dialect. Nor, of course, do they know that
[f] for /T/ is a feature of it.

Speakers of a dialect which uses [T D] usually notice when they hear
the [f v] variety.

Only because the (almost inaudible) distinction is fetishized in
Britain. Most people do not (almost, _cannot_) hear the difference.

Howie Aronson (teaching phonology many years ago) turned his back,
said the name of a putative local restaurant, and asked us to write it
down. Half the class wrote "Cafe' Mandarin," half wrote "Cathay
Mandarin."

My impression is that many [T D] speakers regard [f
v] and also dropped [h] forms as undesirable.

"Many" of a very small pool -- socially conscious Brits. (I was just
given a DVD of extras from "Are You Being Served," which included a
biography of Mollie Sugden, which atributed her great success in
comedies of class to her ability to switch among super-posh and gutter-
common within a single sentence, accompanied by numerous examples over
the decades. Evidently this is far, far, far more hilarious over there
than to the American audience, which is sufficiently entertained by
the absurdly broad spectacle of Eliza Doolittle doing the same at
Ascot in the movie.)

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.

If you don't "succumb to the temptation," then you're suppressing a
hundred thousand years of linguistic socialization. _People prefer to
talk like their surroundings_, so when the boy I saw at Cambridge
talking RP to his Cockney parents (who were kvelling at every
syllable) goes home on holiday (US: vacation), he dam' well doesn't
talk RP to his old mates!

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

Yes, because [t d s z] have considerably higher functional load so
there's more opportunity for confusion.

(It also might help them conceal their native language, which might
sometimes be desirable, as we have a pretty good idea who says "zis"
and who says "dis.")

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

I don't think so.

.