From: MDuPree@world.std.com (Micky DuPree)
Subject: Brit/Yank pronunciation [Was: How to insult a Brit]
Summary: Transcription of phonemes is trickier than you think.
Keywords: Merkun
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 19:42:40 GMT

In article <1992Nov6.144719.11193@bristol.ac.uk> smee@bristol.ac.uk
(Paul Smee) writes:
>In article <1d9mbsINNefn@early-bird.think.com> sandee@Think.COM (Daan
>Sandee) writes:
>>In article <1992Nov4.100342.26399@bristol.ac.uk>, smee@bristol.ac.uk
>>(Paul Smee) writes:
>>>Aw, I'm a Merkun, and I use the term.  Pay closer attention, you may
>>>find that a lot of people actually DO say 'American' that way.
>>>[...] if you're not paying careful attention, you WILL hear what you
>>>expect rather than what was actually said.)
>>
>>But did you see the point while you were still living in the States,
>>or did you have to go and live among the Britons in order to
>>appreciate the problems that your compatriots have when addressing
>>themselves by name ? This is not an idle question ; I am really
>>interested whether a hearing adjustment acquired as a child has to be
>>unlearned by adaptation to one's surroundings, or whether a discerning
>>adult can perceive the problem in the original situation.
>
>[....]
>
>I'm probably not a representative sample, since I moved around a lot in
>my childhood and so have been aware of difficulties caused by accents
>for as long as I can remember. However, in my case, I was aware of
>extreme cases (e.g. LBJ's 'fellow Merkuns') long before I came over
>here.  Now that I've become somewhat attuned to British
>pronounciations, I spot it in a wider range of US accents, including
>many where I wouldn't previously have noticed it.

I want to suggest a different set of mechanisms from the simplistic "One
group is pronouncing these sounds and another group is not" theory,
which I think rests on linguistic ignorance.  I was born and raised in
the Southeast U.S. but have lived in the Northeast U.S. for the last 17
years.  "I'm a Merkun" would probably pass in a Hollywood movie as a
"Southern accent" to non-Southern Americans (don't get me started on
"Gawn wit' de Win'"), but while true Southerners would certainly
understand what was being said and would even recognize that the accent
was close to Southern, it still wouldn't sound quite right.

When I try to reproduce on my lips and in my mind the sounds that my
family and childhood friends (from north Florida and south Georgia)
would make when asked to say, "I'm an American," I DO get a great
diminution of the unstressed "a" vowels compared to American Broadcast
English.  But there is still something (as opposed to nothing) going on
in that sequence.  In fact, if I refine it and exaggerate it, it comes
out close to, "I'm-nuh Mer`kun," where I think you could say that the
first "a" represents an elongation of the nasal stretch between the
first "m" and the first "n", and the second "a" represents a glottal
stop.  The syllable I have represented as "nuh" is very short and barely
stressed at all.
.
Here's the tricky bit.  Each dialect has its own "rules" about what
qualifies to be transcribed and what doesn't.  The rules of the
Southeastern U.S. "drawl" have a very low threshold as to what qualifies
as signal versus what is mere noise, especially in instances such as
this.  Southerners hear what are to them genuine sounds and do not see
how others could label these sounds as silent.  They are, however,
completely unattuned to just how markedly diminished these sounds are
compared to more crisply and strongly stressed syllables, and are
baffled as to how anyone else could miss hearing them.  Other dialects
have what is obviously a much higher threshold of what qualifies as
signal versus noise in this instance, so when they hear the elongation
of the nasal sounds, the syllable "nuh", and the glottal stop, these
sounds simply don't register as "true" sounds at all (with the exception
of the "nuh" being translated into an "a"), therefore the aural sections
of the brain do not even process them as meaningful data and the
conscious mind discounts their existence altogether.

Just my theory.  Follow-ups should probably go to sci.lang where some
stuffy pundits and opinionated polyglots can give you the real scoop so
long as you're willing to wade through their dueling philosophies. :-)

>I wasn't at all aware of the American tendency (which I still share) to
>pronounce many 't's as 'd's (e.g. 'glass of wawder', as opposed to the
>distinct British 'glahs of waTer') until I came over here.

I think that in some cases it's a true case of displacement by a "d"
(frequently, I think, in Southern U.S.) but in others it's a case of
what they call an unaspirated "t", for which there is no official
recognition in the phonetic English of school textbooks at all.  The
official "t" in English is followed by a slight puff of air
("aspirated").  If I concentrate, I think I can hear unaspirated "t's"
being used quite a lot in the middle of words in American Broadcast
English (but never at the beginning), such as in the word "metal",
which, while close to the ABE pronunciation of the word "medal" is still
not quite the same.  The "t" is unvoiced while the "d" is voiced
(indeed, that is the defining difference between the two sounds).
Because there is no way to officially distinguish between the aspirated
and unaspirated "t" in English (similarly for "c", "ch", "p", and maybe
"f" and "s"), the unaspirated consonants are often transliterated into
English from other languages by their voiced counterparts, which I
believe is why the revisionist English version of Chairman Mao's name is
Mao Dze Dung rather than the previous version Mao Tse Tung.

Two more notes on the subject.

It has been remarked on, at least anecdotally by the members of the U.S.
Armed Forces in my acquaintance, that a lot of American service
personnel pick up a heavily Southern influenced "service dialect" no
matter where they originally came from or where they received their
training.  When under stress, fully half of them start to sound like
drill sergeants from boot camp in Georgia.

The British dialects that I have encountered through listening to
British television have a habit of missing out some unstressed vowels
entirely, at least to my "Merkun" ears.  E.g., secretary as SEC re tree
instead of the American SEC re TAIR ee.  Do Britons hear something in
that spot that I'm just not recognizing?

-Micky


* Paul Smee for president.  Stephen Wilcox for PM *