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

On Jul 22, 5:49 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 22, 11:25 am, Seán O'Leathlóbhair <jwlaw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Jul 22, 1:10 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jul 22, 4:54 am, Dominic Bojarski <dominicbojar...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Jul 22, 6:44 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

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

<snip>

They were all taken aback when they first heard Poles using this
pronunciation. Even the one from London, who has probably heard it all
his life (48 years). As a matter of fact, he's the one who had the
biggest problem with it.

Duh. That's what I've been saying all along. ONLY the "one from
London" (scil. only the Brit) is aware of and attuned to the
particular negative sociolinguistic trait of [f] for /T/.

The "one from London" - I guess that's me.

Well, thanks to Dominic's intemperate snippage, we don't know who his
"They" is (and I can't go back to a previous decad of postings in this
thread, thanks to google groups), but I don't think he was referring
to contributors to this thread.

Please note that I was not making any value judgement myself. I was
not denigrating one of my own native accents. I was merely warning
that others do. Those who read my warning can choose whether they
care about the matter. Is Britain the only country that has dialect
snobbery? I don't think so. Is America immune? I doubt it. Is any
country immune? I would be interested to know.

If America had "dialect snobbery," would it have elected a whole raft
of presidents with funny accents ([radio was not a major factor in
1932, so we begin with] Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton,
Bush43)? Interspersed among them were presidents with standard
accents, from either the Midwest or California: Eisenhower, Nixon,
Bush41. (Ford doesn't count because he was never elected.)

In a democracy (the USA is one, isn't it?), this is not incompatible
with dialect snobbery. The simplest explanation is that the snobs are
a minority. Another explanation is that the snobs do not agree on
which are the prestige accents and hence don't vote as a bloc. Yet
another is that even the snobs may regard other attributes of the
candidates as more important.

I am more familiar with the Philippines, there are certainly dialect
snobs and presidents with non-prestige accents. This is a case of the
simple explanation, the snobs exist but are a minority. There is not
just dialect snobbery but language snobbery. I have met Filipinos who
look down on their own indigenous languages and claim to only speak
English and Spanish. Speaking only English is not a barrier to a good
job. Speaking only Tagalog is. Speaking only one of the smaller
local languages would be an even bigger barrier. For the best jobs, a
foreign education and a native English accent is an advantage over a
typical Filipino English accent.

--
Seán Ó Leathlóbhair

.

Relevant Pages

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