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

In article <0fMoi.798$ie3.461@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Richard Wordingham" <jrw0602@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 21, 9:29 pm, Dominic Bojarski wrote:

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"?

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"?

Let me offer a suggestion. A feature of many American accents is that they
replace [T] by [tT] or [t].

But a feature of many other American accents is that they replace [T]
by [f]! That was in fact one of Dominic's reasons for teaching his
students to avoid it, because it sounds like a particular accent that
he looks down upon and claims would hinder their ability to get a job.

And actually, I find /T/ -> [f] in non-AAVE dialects as well, in
particular circumstances. My niece calls me Na[f]an, not Na[t]an
(also, though my name is sometimes mistaken for Jason in noisy rooms,
by far the most common mistake is thinking my name is David); I have a
friend named Beth who goes by the nickname Beffy, never Betty;
"nothing" pronounced as [n^fn] can hardly be said to be isolated just
to AAVE and Cockey; and the Eggcorn Database includes a couple of
cases like never/nether and sliver/slither.

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/
.

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