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

On Jul 21, 9:29 pm, Dominic Bojarski <dominicbojar...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Five years ago, I moved to Poland and have since been teaching English
to Poles. All of them start out pronouncing [T D] as [f v]. Many

Do you not contradict yourself? This shows how similar they are!

To Poles, yes. To native speakers, no. No contradiction.

Poles who teach English themselves also do so. This is a extremely
irritating mistake and I correct it every time I hear it. As a matter
of fact, I tell them that it is an "unforgivable mistake", and to use
the Polish [t d] instead.

Why don't you teach them how to make [T] and [D]?? You're as bad as
Mark misleading his Hungarians!!

Depends on the level and goals of the student. It takes a Pole a lot
of practice to say [T D]. Not all of them are willing to spend that
much time on one sound of many that they have problems with.

It's a matter of proximal and distal goals. The proximal goal is to
stop the student from using [f v].

Why? Why is it "unforgivable"?

This is relatively easy and can be
accomplished quickly. The distal goal is to get the student to
correctly pronounce [T D]. This demands a lot of time and effort. It
is also a lot easier to do if the student is starting out from [t d]
than from [f v].

I do not mislead them at all. I tell them quite clearly that using the
POLISH [t d] is a compromise, but one that does not impair
comprehension as does using [f v].

How does that "impair comprehension"?

Sean asked whether there were any American accents that use [f v] for
[T D]. Uneducated African-Americans often do, and this is considered
an extremely negative feature of their speech. Anyone who says 'wiff'
for 'with', or 'ax' for ask', is going to be at a disadvantage on the
labor market. It really raises hackles, including among better
educated African-Americans.

As Nathan explained, it's a lot more complicated than that.

And many, many educated African Americans have phonetic traits that
reveal their origins that they are simply unaware of -- this one
happens to have reached general consciousness.

To the point that it has become a shibboleth. It's not a matter of a
voice being recognized as African-American that is the issue, but of
the voice being recognized as uneducated. It has reached general
consciousness because it clearly stands out and sounds bizarre to non-
AAVE native speakers, few of whom are, as you said, acoustic
phoneticians.

Why do you claim it "sounds bizarre"?

Cockney is regarded as "British" and hence prestigious in the US.

.