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--- In shavian@..., "C. Paige Gabhart" <pgabhart@c...> wrote:

>
> I was born in Kentucky and have lived most of my adult life in
southern
> Indiana. I pronounce "drawing" as Scott does with no "r." I don't
think
> I've ever heard anyone in this area put an "r" in that word.
>
> I also seem to have retroflexed vowels.

I concur with all of the above. I'm a Mississippian transplanted to
Texas as an adult.

> I was amazed in previous e-mails, that many of you seem to think
that
> pronouncing "wh" as in "which" is now a distinction that most
English
> speakers don't make. After giving this careful thought, I believe
it is a
> distinction I always make. Perhaps I don't listen carefully enough,
but I
> thought it was a distinction most of the people around me in
southern
> Indiana make as well. I checked with my wife and she makes it. Dr.
Dan's
> comment that in his midwestern dialect the use of "wh" is considered
an
> affectation, I really find surprising. Perhaps there are enough
> Kentuckians in southern Indiana, that the speech patterns of its
people are
> not really midwestern?

Can't comment on Kentucky or Indiana... but I always distinguish
between w and wh. In fact, I always thought, growing up, that
people who didn't were either hard of hearing or had speech
impediments or whatever. (Actually, those two may be responsible
for a lot of language changes. A little yeast leavens the whole
lump sometimes.)

As a child I heard feeble jokes based on Y/why and witch/which...
I always assumed the joke lay in the similarity of the sounds, not
realizing that some people considered them identical.

I also grew up thinking that the Mexican "Juan" was pronounced
"wan" (even in areas that know the wh -- probably because of the
influence of TV and the like -- anyone remember "wan" Valdez in
the Folger's (?) coffee commercials?). But it is actually pronounced
"hwan" (and Mexicans DO have that sound! -- I know that different
dialects of Spanish may vary).

If I had made Shavian, I would have included that sound as a separate
symbol, just as Shavian made concessions to rhotic speakers like
myself.

Another thing I'll confess irritates me. I'm not a linguist, so those
of you who are may correct me.

People talk about the "voiced" and "unvoiced" wh. It is no such thing.
You're either swapping a sound (if you think of hw as one sound) or
deleting one (if you think it's two).

When I distinguish between "alter" and "halter," I don't say that the
second one has a "voiced a"!!!

As for spelling it "hw" in Shavian, I do rather think that the h has
to come first... slowing it down dramatically, I pronounce "what"
as "huh-wot" not as "wuh-hot."

Thanks for your comments, Paige.

Hal

>
> Paige Gabhart


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One thing that has puzzled me is the tendency for some people
(in dialects I hardly ever run across) to drop an H (as though
they considered it silent) and then, apparently feeling the
need for a consonant, tack on a Y! Actually this in cases where
there may be the ghost of a Y anyhow...

The only case I can think of now is my calculus professor who
was from somewhere in the northeastern US, I think. He said
the word "human" as "yuman" (always making me think "Yuman,"
as in a resident of Yuma, Arizona, if they call themselves
that).

We discussed dialect sometimes, and I think only once
he perhaps got a little ticked off. I think perhaps he
argued the h was silent, and I asked him why didn't he say
"uman" then? (I think I perhaps put a glottal stop at the
front of the word.) And he said, "Because I don't speak French!"

Of course, it can be argued that the people who pronounce the
h are really saying "hyuman" with a y consonant sneaking in. But
I don't think of it that way.

The vowel is a little problematic, too... I pronounce "human" as
"hewman" roughly, and "hooman" would sound ridiculous to me...
but "Yuman" I could pronounce as "yewman" or "yooman" and tell
little difference... more fodder for the argument of there being
a y in there, maybe.

I think one reason I used to identify dialectal differences with
lazy ears, lazy tongues, and so on, was that there was so much
of that where I grew up. My parents were well-educated, but the
surrounding area was pretty rural and uneducated. I heard a LOT
of interesting things growing up.

In my mother's dialect, somewhat different from mine, "sh" is
not followed by a consonant. She has occasionally stumbled over
words like schnauser or Schweitzer, but most of the time she
blissfully says snauser or Sweitzer. Yet her dialect is still
not nearly as weird to me as the neighbors'... :)

This reminds me of the quaint passage in the Old Testament, where
a neighboring tribe could not pronounce "shibboleth" but said
"sibboleth" instead... this was the standard way of recognizing
spies and enemies - ask him for the password, and if he says
"sibboleth," you kill him. (Now THAT's prescriptive!)

Hal




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Dear Hal, Comments on your comments:
1) If you want to get someone mad, point out their dialectal differences
with the local standard. For most people, dialect is not conscious. Having
it pointed out provokes strong emotions. Language is intimately connected
with how we think about ourselves--or else there would have been no "My Fair
Lady" of Shaw's "Pygmalion."
2) Dialect pronunciation records location of the speaker at ages 13-15 years
old. I'd be reluctant to add any more importance to them than that. I don't
think there are good dialects and bad ones.
3) I'm interested in your mother's dialect, which does not all the
combination, "sh + Consonant." Where was she born and raised? Very
interesting phonological rule!
Daniel Szczurek

----------
>From: "Hal Fulton" <hal9000@...>
>To: shavian@...
>Subject: [shavian] H and Y
>Date: WedThurSepJun 2729, 2000200029,11:04
>

> One thing that has puzzled me is the tendency for some people
> (in dialects I hardly ever run across) to drop an H (as though
> they considered it silent) and then, apparently feeling the
> need for a consonant, tack on a Y! Actually this in cases where
> there may be the ghost of a Y anyhow...
>
> The only case I can think of now is my calculus professor who
> was from somewhere in the northeastern US, I think. He said
> the word "human" as "yuman" (always making me think "Yuman,"
> as in a resident of Yuma, Arizona, if they call themselves
> that).
>
> We discussed dialect sometimes, and I think only once
> he perhaps got a little ticked off. I think perhaps he
> argued the h was silent, and I asked him why didn't he say
> "uman" then? (I think I perhaps put a glottal stop at the
> front of the word.) And he said, "Because I don't speak French!"
>
> Of course, it can be argued that the people who pronounce the
> h are really saying "hyuman" with a y consonant sneaking in. But
> I don't think of it that way.
>
> The vowel is a little problematic, too... I pronounce "human" as
> "hewman" roughly, and "hooman" would sound ridiculous to me...
> but "Yuman" I could pronounce as "yewman" or "yooman" and tell
> little difference... more fodder for the argument of there being
> a y in there, maybe.
>
> I think one reason I used to identify dialectal differences with
> lazy ears, lazy tongues, and so on, was that there was so much
> of that where I grew up. My parents were well-educated, but the
> surrounding area was pretty rural and uneducated. I heard a LOT
> of interesting things growing up.
>
> In my mother's dialect, somewhat different from mine, "sh" is
> not followed by a consonant. She has occasionally stumbled over
> words like schnauser or Schweitzer, but most of the time she
> blissfully says snauser or Sweitzer. Yet her dialect is still
> not nearly as weird to me as the neighbors'... :)
>
> This reminds me of the quaint passage in the Old Testament, where
> a neighboring tribe could not pronounce "shibboleth" but said
> "sibboleth" instead... this was the standard way of recognizing
> spies and enemies - ask him for the password, and if he says
> "sibboleth," you kill him. (Now THAT's prescriptive!)
>
> Hal

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Thanks for replying, Daniel...

Perhaps I've made myself appear a snob or a jackass... I didn't
mean to sound that way. I do believe in common courtesy, or even
uncommon, and I do believe people should treat each other well.
Perhaps I have been too frank because of the anonymity of this
forum and the knowledge that this is a community of limited size,
full of strangers.

Additionally, I have a tendency toward a little too much scientific
detachment (though I'm not a scientist). So my analysis may have
slandered some people (referring to note 2). I'm more at home
analyzing the behavior of computer programs (which don't have
feelings) than people.

More comments below...

--- In shavian@..., "Daniel G. Szczurek" <twojbrat@w...>
wrote:
> Dear Hal, Comments on your comments:
> 1) If you want to get someone mad, point out their dialectal
differences
> with the local standard. For most people, dialect is not conscious.
Having
> it pointed out provokes strong emotions. Language is intimately
connected
> with how we think about ourselves--or else there would have been no
"My Fair
> Lady" of Shaw's "Pygmalion."

Bruce and I were friends, and he was more snippy than angry. In most
cases, if I mention anything of the sort at all, it's more like, "You
have an interesting accent that I don't recognize. Where are you
from?"

Moderately amusing anecdote: At a Japanese restaurant once, my friends
and I got into a conversation with our waiter (who was studying
Japanese). He asked, "Based on my accent, where do you think I'm
from?" No one answered. I hesitated and said, "Wisconsin."
I answered with confidence, playing the Henry Higgins bit, but I was
bluffing. I picked a random state over a thousand miles away, where
I had never been, from which I didn't know anyone.

But of course, he looked surprised and said, "Absolutely right!"
Later,
I confessed it was sheer luck... :)

> 2) Dialect pronunciation records location of the speaker at ages
13-15 years
> old. I'd be reluctant to add any more importance to them than that.
I don't
> think there are good dialects and bad ones.

I don't mean that there are good dialects and bad ones... truthfully
I "feel" that there are, but I don't "think" that there are.

I don't propose to treat people differently based on dialect, or even
to judge them. There is a bit of Higgins in me, but not that much.

In my personal experience (which is not broad!), there is a
correlation between educational level and the deviation of that
person's dialect from the national average (if there is such a thing).

However, I do not mean to put down those people. Many of them are
dear friends of my parents and my (deceased) grandparents. My parents
and I do not withdraw from them on any level, but associate with
them daily. (Of course, I do not live in that area anymore, but I
still visit.) Many are elderly people who lived through the Great
Depression, who had to drop out of school to work to support the
family. They were too poor to afford shoes in the winter. And I
freely confess that many of them are possessed of a stronger
character than I ever expect to have.

As for lazy ears and lazy tongues... perhaps that is an inappropriate
expression. I only meant the carelessness that we all exhibit to one
degree or another. No one can speak with absolute machinelike
precision or hear with 100.0% accuracy. If we could, language
changes might be a thousand times slower or even nil. That's just a
harebrained theory of mine, not to be taken too seriously.

I have been interested in all aspects of language since childhood.
Even when I was in a conversation myself, there was always a detached
part of my mind that was listening not just to the meaning, but
listening for pronunciation and usage. It always fascinated when
people heard each other incorrectly... I have seen cases where one
person would say, "How do you pronounce this?" and the other person
would say "X" (uttering some collection of sounds). The first person
would attempt it, saying "Y?" (uttering some DIFFERENT pronunciation).
That's the first surprise. The second surprise is when the second
person confirms it with "Yes, that's right"!

I'll state my *principal* harebrained theory of linguistics for any
who are interested (with the disclaimer that I'm just a computer
guy who has read two or three specialized books on linguistics,
and probably not the "right" ones).

It seems to me that there is a fundamental difference in the
performance
of the human speech mechanisms and the human ear. This is subjective
and
hard to aupport, but I will give my impressions anyway. People
occasionally stumble over words or unconsciously shift toward easier
pronunciations, resulting in metathesis and the like; and they have
things that they individually find hard to say, whether because of
dialect or habit or whatever; and there are such things as
"tongue-twisters," utterances that are famous for being rather
difficult
to say. But basically, the tongue, lips, and so on, do pretty much as
they are told. We are "good" at talking.

But we are not so good at hearing. (Hearing, or listening? But that is
another topic.) I am amazed at the number of times people say "What?"
or "Huh?" in ordinary conversation (myself included). I am amazed at
how they say "Did you say X?" and the other says, "No, I said Y."
This happens even in the best acoustical environments.

I am amazed at the things that people mispronounce because they
mishear
them. My fourth-grade teacher corrected a girl in our class who said
"chicken pops" instead of "chicken pox." I think no one had ever
corrected her before because they didn't hear the difference. I hear
a lot of people say "step foot" instead of "set foot" -- there is a
kind of logic to it, but I think it's simple mishearing. A lot of
people
say "hone in" instead of "home in." Some will argue these are correct
--
I'm not discussing grammar here -- but even if they are widespread
enough
to be "correct," I still think they arose from the mishearing of the
original forms.

There is a large amount of humor to be harvested from the errant human
ear. The word "mondegreen" has virtually become a real word in our
language -- from the person (who was it?) who thought the poem said,
"Oh, they ha' slain the Earl a' Murray/And Lady Mondegreen." (I
probably
got that wrong.) But actually, they "laid him on the green."

Of course, poems are less popular in modern America than songs... and
songs provide an even richer source of mishearing (probably because of
the background noise and the shifting of emphasis on syllables to fit
rhythms). Jimi Hendrix exhorts the listener, "'Scuse me, while I kiss
the sky" -- heard by numerous people as "while I kiss this guy." I
have
seen at least one book devoted to this kind of thing and at least one
web
site (kissthisguy.com, I think?).

But one of the most interesting observations I have ever made is this
one. (Now, some people, linguists or otherwise, may argue with me
here.)
When I pronounce a word, I "know" what I am saying. I command my
tongue,
and it pretty much does what I tell it. When I utter two sounds that
are
close together, I "know" which is which -- not by listening to what
comes
out of my mouth, but by my thoughts and intentions, and more
importantly,
tactile feedback inside my mouth and throat.

Now, here is the catch: I can utter two sounds which in my speech are
nearly the same, and I know them apart. (Part of this may be that
sound
is conducted through the inside of my head -- which is why our voices
sound different to us on tape). But I can actually record MY OWN
speech onto a tape and listen to it... and I can't distinguish those
sounds anymore! To me, this supports my theory that in general, "the
tongue works better than the ear."

Some people will say, "No, you only THINK you're saying different
sounds.
You've already admitted you can't hear the difference yourself on
tape.
That shows it's all psychological." But I don't agree.

I wish there was an accurate machine that could say, "This phoneme is
the
same as this one, but different from that one, to some degree of
tolerance." But I've looked at voiceprints, and they DO NOT seem
remotely
up to that challenge. And as a programmer, I know that voice
recognition
is definitely not up to that challenege either.

I have also thought about some kind of fluoroscopic device that would
photograph the motion of the mouth's interior during speech. Probably
something like that has been done long ago. Wouldn't it be interesting
if two photographs substantiated someone's claim to be saying distinct
sounds, when hearers claimed to hear the same sounds?

I recall hearing from a friend about a thing on TV wherein an Indian
infant had learned to distinguish between similar phonemes (I think
these
were "b" and "bh" which most Americans, including myself, have trouble
saying and hearing). This little baby would grin or something at one
of
the sounds, but not the other, reproducibly. And my friend reported
that
he couldn't hear the difference at all. (Obviously there is a huge
cultural element to the whole thing -- something I haven't touched on
here.)

One more tidbit here. We all know the atypical speech patterns that
deaf
people have. What I had never noticed before was an effect I saw in a
friend of mine (and no, I never said a word about this to him). He was
not deaf, but was significantly hard of hearing and had been for most
or all of his life. His speech was normal -- you would not call it
slurred or say that he had any impediment. But his mispronounced words
were extremely frequent -- on the order of one per sentence. For
example,
he pronounced "enhanced" to rhyme with "branched." There was no
regional
component to this, because he was from my region. My theory is that he
was repeating what he was hearing, as we all do. And I think that the
faulty operation of human hearing is one of the biggest reasons that
languages change and we have dialects in the first place.


> 3) I'm interested in your mother's dialect, which does not all the
> combination, "sh + Consonant." Where was she born and raised? Very
> interesting phonological rule!
> Daniel Szczurek

She was born and raised less than a mile from where I was... :) That
is,
almost the geographical center of Mississippi. But it's a fairly
common
thing; I've heard people all over central Mississippi (at least) say
things like "snauser" and so on. Some always say it, some only when
they are in a hurry or stumble.

Of course, my speech is more neutral than hers, largely because I
spent
so much time in front of the TV as a child. I really did pick up a
significant part of my speech from hundreds or thousands of miles
away.
She, however, grew up in the pre-television era. They had a radio, but
I doubt it affected her a tenth as much as TV affected me. For one
thing, she was probably a lot more social than I was. :)

I don't know what other areas are like, but I do know that where I
come
from, dialects are as numerous as bugs on a bumper. My parents grew up
only fifty miles apart, and they definitely have some differences in
both pronunciation and usage. Of course, arguably you could make
trips
of only a mile or two and find different dialects... sometimes I think
we each speak our own unique dialect anyway.

And my father comes from an area perhaps even more linguistically
diverse.
Some things I have heard from him are: Thomas = "tawmas" rather than
"tahmas"; Cooper with an oo as in book, not as in fool; and bomb =
"bum" not "bahm." I don't recall hearing any of these except in a
person
from Neshoba county (though the first sometimes sounds a little
British
to me).

There are some pretty interesting phenomena in the south. Sometimes
there
are indications that a bit of English has somehow hung around for ages
in areas that don't change as rapidly or are a little out of phase.
One
of my high school teachers (physics, actually) was very interested in
this. He reported hearing the usage "holpen" as the past participle of
"help." "That's very old English," he said, "'He hath holpen me.'"

I myself recall hearing the usage of the word "strew" (pronounced
"strow"
to rhyme with "throw") by my grandmother. I was too young to know
anything
about spelling; I only connected "strow" with "strew" when I found it
in
a hymn as an adult. But though the meaning was the same, everyone
pronounced it as "stroo" (to rhyme with "threw")! I have since
confirmed
that there is an old pronunciation of "strew" as my grandmother used
it.
It may well have been 200 years out of date, however, when in the late
1960's she told me, "Don't strew your toys around the floor." :)

I suppose there is a kind of logic to it... after all, we do pronounce
"sew" as "so" (though my Indian friends often say "soo"). And in the
King James Version (as in Shakespeare), we see the word "shew" which
today we'd write as "show." I actually pronounce "shew" as "show" --
though everyone else I know says "shoo."

Sorry, but this has strayed far afield from the Shaw Alphabet.

I'll make up for that by posting something more on-topic soon... :)

Thanks,
Hal




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Dear Hal,
I'm sorry if my note caused you any hard feelings. I intended them only
as general comments on dialect research and examination of the principles of
dialectology. I sincerely apologize to you for any bad feelings I called
you.
The example of insensitivity I have in my mind is that because of which
we got a lecture on linguistics in ethics, not your remarks, which I find
interesting.
A dialect student was once working in New York City. He studied social
dialects in detail, and one of his informants was a well-off woman. He
studied her dialect and found that she displayed a "low class" dialect, not
the upper class dialect that she tought she used. The student went on and on
about it, and even played tapes for the woman. She became depressed and
avoided her friends. Eventually she killed herself, because she couldn't
face the humiliation of having been found out to be of "low class" origin.
The moral was: When you study someone's language, you are studying their
personal lives and their self-image. So, watch out what you do and say.
I don't think anyone on this discussion would hurt another person. I
take your comments as objective, and I think everyone else does. If I hurt
your feelings,it was not on purpose. I ask your forgiveness.
Your linguistic thoughts are insightful. I have just been putting them
in terms that come up in formal linguistics classes, to affirm that what
you're saying is solid linguistics, even if you are not a formally trained
linguist. I hope that you will continue your informal linguistics studies
and keep the data in an organized form for the use of later linguists.
Apologetically, Dan

----------
>From: "Hal Fulton" <hal9000@...>
>To: shavian@...
>Subject: [shavian] Re: H and Y
>Date: ThuThurSepJun 2829, 2000200029,12:59
>

> Thanks for replying, Daniel...
>
> Perhaps I've made myself appear a snob or a jackass... I didn't
> mean to sound that way. I do believe in common courtesy, or even
> uncommon, and I do believe people should treat each other well.
> Perhaps I have been too frank because of the anonymity of this
> forum and the knowledge that this is a community of limited size,
> full of strangers.
>
> Additionally, I have a tendency toward a little too much scientific
> detachment (though I'm not a scientist). So my analysis may have
> slandered some people (referring to note 2). I'm more at home
> analyzing the behavior of computer programs (which don't have
> feelings) than people.
>
> More comments below...
>
> --- In shavian@..., "Daniel G. Szczurek" <twojbrat@w...>
> wrote:
>> Dear Hal, Comments on your comments:
>> 1) If you want to get someone mad, point out their dialectal
> differences
>> with the local standard. For most people, dialect is not conscious.
> Having
>> it pointed out provokes strong emotions. Language is intimately
> connected
>> with how we think about ourselves--or else there would have been no
> "My Fair
>> Lady" of Shaw's "Pygmalion."
>
> Bruce and I were friends, and he was more snippy than angry. In most
> cases, if I mention anything of the sort at all, it's more like, "You
> have an interesting accent that I don't recognize. Where are you
> from?"
>
> Moderately amusing anecdote: At a Japanese restaurant once, my friends
> and I got into a conversation with our waiter (who was studying
> Japanese). He asked, "Based on my accent, where do you think I'm
> from?" No one answered. I hesitated and said, "Wisconsin."
> I answered with confidence, playing the Henry Higgins bit, but I was
> bluffing. I picked a random state over a thousand miles away, where
> I had never been, from which I didn't know anyone.
>
> But of course, he looked surprised and said, "Absolutely right!"
> Later,
> I confessed it was sheer luck... :)
>
>> 2) Dialect pronunciation records location of the speaker at ages
> 13-15 years
>> old. I'd be reluctant to add any more importance to them than that.
> I don't
>> think there are good dialects and bad ones.
>
> I don't mean that there are good dialects and bad ones... truthfully
> I "feel" that there are, but I don't "think" that there are.
>
> I don't propose to treat people differently based on dialect, or even
> to judge them. There is a bit of Higgins in me, but not that much.
>
> In my personal experience (which is not broad!), there is a
> correlation between educational level and the deviation of that
> person's dialect from the national average (if there is such a thing).
>
> However, I do not mean to put down those people. Many of them are
> dear friends of my parents and my (deceased) grandparents. My parents
> and I do not withdraw from them on any level, but associate with
> them daily. (Of course, I do not live in that area anymore, but I
> still visit.) Many are elderly people who lived through the Great
> Depression, who had to drop out of school to work to support the
> family. They were too poor to afford shoes in the winter. And I
> freely confess that many of them are possessed of a stronger
> character than I ever expect to have.
>
> As for lazy ears and lazy tongues... perhaps that is an inappropriate
> expression. I only meant the carelessness that we all exhibit to one
> degree or another. No one can speak with absolute machinelike
> precision or hear with 100.0% accuracy. If we could, language
> changes might be a thousand times slower or even nil. That's just a
> harebrained theory of mine, not to be taken too seriously.
>
> I have been interested in all aspects of language since childhood.
> Even when I was in a conversation myself, there was always a detached
> part of my mind that was listening not just to the meaning, but
> listening for pronunciation and usage. It always fascinated when
> people heard each other incorrectly... I have seen cases where one
> person would say, "How do you pronounce this?" and the other person
> would say "X" (uttering some collection of sounds). The first person
> would attempt it, saying "Y?" (uttering some DIFFERENT pronunciation).
> That's the first surprise. The second surprise is when the second
> person confirms it with "Yes, that's right"!
>
> I'll state my *principal* harebrained theory of linguistics for any
> who are interested (with the disclaimer that I'm just a computer
> guy who has read two or three specialized books on linguistics,
> and probably not the "right" ones).
>
> It seems to me that there is a fundamental difference in the
> performance
> of the human speech mechanisms and the human ear. This is subjective
> and
> hard to aupport, but I will give my impressions anyway. People
> occasionally stumble over words or unconsciously shift toward easier
> pronunciations, resulting in metathesis and the like; and they have
> things that they individually find hard to say, whether because of
> dialect or habit or whatever; and there are such things as
> "tongue-twisters," utterances that are famous for being rather
> difficult
> to say. But basically, the tongue, lips, and so on, do pretty much as
> they are told. We are "good" at talking.
>
> But we are not so good at hearing. (Hearing, or listening? But that is
> another topic.) I am amazed at the number of times people say "What?"
> or "Huh?" in ordinary conversation (myself included). I am amazed at
> how they say "Did you say X?" and the other says, "No, I said Y."
> This happens even in the best acoustical environments.
>
> I am amazed at the things that people mispronounce because they
> mishear
> them. My fourth-grade teacher corrected a girl in our class who said
> "chicken pops" instead of "chicken pox." I think no one had ever
> corrected her before because they didn't hear the difference. I hear
> a lot of people say "step foot" instead of "set foot" -- there is a
> kind of logic to it, but I think it's simple mishearing. A lot of
> people
> say "hone in" instead of "home in." Some will argue these are correct
> --
> I'm not discussing grammar here -- but even if they are widespread
> enough
> to be "correct," I still think they arose from the mishearing of the
> original forms.
>
> There is a large amount of humor to be harvested from the errant human
> ear. The word "mondegreen" has virtually become a real word in our
> language -- from the person (who was it?) who thought the poem said,
> "Oh, they ha' slain the Earl a' Murray/And Lady Mondegreen." (I
> probably
> got that wrong.) But actually, they "laid him on the green."
>
> Of course, poems are less popular in modern America than songs... and
> songs provide an even richer source of mishearing (probably because of
> the background noise and the shifting of emphasis on syllables to fit
> rhythms). Jimi Hendrix exhorts the listener, "'Scuse me, while I kiss
> the sky" -- heard by numerous people as "while I kiss this guy." I
> have
> seen at least one book devoted to this kind of thing and at least one
> web
> site (kissthisguy.com, I think?).
>
> But one of the most interesting observations I have ever made is this
> one. (Now, some people, linguists or otherwise, may argue with me
> here.)
> When I pronounce a word, I "know" what I am saying. I command my
> tongue,
> and it pretty much does what I tell it. When I utter two sounds that
> are
> close together, I "know" which is which -- not by listening to what
> comes
> out of my mouth, but by my thoughts and intentions, and more
> importantly,
> tactile feedback inside my mouth and throat.
>
> Now, here is the catch: I can utter two sounds which in my speech are
> nearly the same, and I know them apart. (Part of this may be that
> sound
> is conducted through the inside of my head -- which is why our voices
> sound different to us on tape). But I can actually record MY OWN
> speech onto a tape and listen to it... and I can't distinguish those
> sounds anymore! To me, this supports my theory that in general, "the
> tongue works better than the ear."
>
> Some people will say, "No, you only THINK you're saying different
> sounds.
> You've already admitted you can't hear the difference yourself on
> tape.
> That shows it's all psychological." But I don't agree.
>
> I wish there was an accurate machine that could say, "This phoneme is
> the
> same as this one, but different from that one, to some degree of
> tolerance." But I've looked at voiceprints, and they DO NOT seem
> remotely
> up to that challenge. And as a programmer, I know that voice
> recognition
> is definitely not up to that challenege either.
>
> I have also thought about some kind of fluoroscopic device that would
> photograph the motion of the mouth's interior during speech. Probably
> something like that has been done long ago. Wouldn't it be interesting
> if two photographs substantiated someone's claim to be saying distinct
> sounds, when hearers claimed to hear the same sounds?
>
> I recall hearing from a friend about a thing on TV wherein an Indian
> infant had learned to distinguish between similar phonemes (I think
> these
> were "b" and "bh" which most Americans, including myself, have trouble
> saying and hearing). This little baby would grin or something at one
> of
> the sounds, but not the other, reproducibly. And my friend reported
> that
> he couldn't hear the difference at all. (Obviously there is a huge
> cultural element to the whole thing -- something I haven't touched on
> here.)
>
> One more tidbit here. We all know the atypical speech patterns that
> deaf
> people have. What I had never noticed before was an effect I saw in a
> friend of mine (and no, I never said a word about this to him). He was
> not deaf, but was significantly hard of hearing and had been for most
> or all of his life. His speech was normal -- you would not call it
> slurred or say that he had any impediment. But his mispronounced words
> were extremely frequent -- on the order of one per sentence. For
> example,
> he pronounced "enhanced" to rhyme with "branched." There was no
> regional
> component to this, because he was from my region. My theory is that he
> was repeating what he was hearing, as we all do. And I think that the
> faulty operation of human hearing is one of the biggest reasons that
> languages change and we have dialects in the first place.
>
>
>> 3) I'm interested in your mother's dialect, which does not all the
>> combination, "sh + Consonant." Where was she born and raised? Very
>> interesting phonological rule!
>> Daniel Szczurek
>
> She was born and raised less than a mile from where I was... :) That
> is,
> almost the geographical center of Mississippi. But it's a fairly
> common
> thing; I've heard people all over central Mississippi (at least) say
> things like "snauser" and so on. Some always say it, some only when
> they are in a hurry or stumble.
>
> Of course, my speech is more neutral than hers, largely because I
> spent
> so much time in front of the TV as a child. I really did pick up a
> significant part of my speech from hundreds or thousands of miles
> away.
> She, however, grew up in the pre-television era. They had a radio, but
> I doubt it affected her a tenth as much as TV affected me. For one
> thing, she was probably a lot more social than I was. :)
>
> I don't know what other areas are like, but I do know that where I
> come
> from, dialects are as numerous as bugs on a bumper. My parents grew up
> only fifty miles apart, and they definitely have some differences in
> both pronunciation and usage. Of course, arguably you could make
> trips
> of only a mile or two and find different dialects... sometimes I think
> we each speak our own unique dialect anyway.
>
> And my father comes from an area perhaps even more linguistically
> diverse.
> Some things I have heard from him are: Thomas = "tawmas" rather than
> "tahmas"; Cooper with an oo as in book, not as in fool; and bomb =
> "bum" not "bahm." I don't recall hearing any of these except in a
> person
> from Neshoba county (though the first sometimes sounds a little
> British
> to me).
>
> There are some pretty interesting phenomena in the south. Sometimes
> there
> are indications that a bit of English has somehow hung around for ages
> in areas that don't change as rapidly or are a little out of phase.
> One
> of my high school teachers (physics, actually) was very interested in
> this. He reported hearing the usage "holpen" as the past participle of
> "help." "That's very old English," he said, "'He hath holpen me.'"
>
> I myself recall hearing the usage of the word "strew" (pronounced
> "strow"
> to rhyme with "throw") by my grandmother. I was too young to know
> anything
> about spelling; I only connected "strow" with "strew" when I found it
> in
> a hymn as an adult. But though the meaning was the same, everyone
> pronounced it as "stroo" (to rhyme with "threw")! I have since
> confirmed
> that there is an old pronunciation of "strew" as my grandmother used
> it.
> It may well have been 200 years out of date, however, when in the late
> 1960's she told me, "Don't strew your toys around the floor." :)
>
> I suppose there is a kind of logic to it... after all, we do pronounce
> "sew" as "so" (though my Indian friends often say "soo"). And in the
> King James Version (as in Shakespeare), we see the word "shew" which
> today we'd write as "show." I actually pronounce "shew" as "show" --
> though everyone else I know says "shoo."
>
> Sorry, but this has strayed far afield from the Shaw Alphabet.
>
> I'll make up for that by posting something more on-topic soon... :)
>
> Thanks,
> Hal
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

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[Do not bother with my comments to Hal's last message if you are only
interested in Shavian.]

At 07:59 PM 9/28/2000 -0000, Hal Fulton wrote:
>Perhaps I've made myself appear a snob or a jackass... I didn't
>mean to sound that way. I do believe in common courtesy, or even
>uncommon, and I do believe people should treat each other well.
>[snip]
>>
>>" 2) Dialect pronunciation records location of the speaker at ages
>13-15 years old. I'd be reluctant to add any more importance to them
than that. I don't think there are good dialects and bad ones." [Dr.
Dan]
>
>I don't mean that there are good dialects and bad ones... truthfully
>I "feel" that there are, but I don't "think" that there are.
>
>>In my personal experience (which is not broad!), there is a
>correlation between educational level and the deviation of that
>person's dialect from the national average (if there is such a
thing).

Have we had a definition of "dialect" from anyone? In the past, I
believe I tended to think of a dialect as primarily involving the
pronunciation a speaker used. Is that too narrow? Should the
definition also include such things as grammar and syntax?
>
>However, I do not mean to put down those people. Many of them are
>dear friends of my parents and my (deceased) grandparents. My parents
>and I do not withdraw from them on any level, but associate with
>them daily. (Of course, I do not live in that area anymore, but I
>still visit.) Many are elderly people who lived through the Great
>Depression, who had to drop out of school to work to support the
>family. They were too poor to afford shoes in the winter. And I
>freely confess that many of them are possessed of a stronger
>character than I ever expect to have.

I believe it would be illogical to assume someone is stupid or not
worthy of respect because he does not speak the "national average"
dialect. As you say, he may never have had the chance to further his
education beyond a rudimentary level due to finances, family
problems, social expectations when he was young, etc. A prejudice
regarding his dialect could then lead one to underestimate the
sharpness of his mind.

Although not totally apropos, I remember a story a friend of mine
quoted some years back, which I enjoyed. During the Watergate Senate
Hearings, Senator Sam Ervin, in his deep South dialect, asked someone
to remember he was just a poor, country lawyer, and, therefore,
unpretentious in his questioning of witnesses testifying before the
committee. Of course, the joke was, that this "country lawyer"
graduated from Harvard Law School and had a mind sharp as a whip. I
believe he used his southern accent to disarm people.

Last Spring, while in Hilton Head, SC, I had the opportunity to talk
with a woman from the South who had traveled about the country a good
deal in past years. She was well educated and judging from her
appearance today, I do not doubt she was very striking as a young
woman. She complained bitterly of attending parties and other social
functions at which people were quite friendly to her until she opened
her mouth to express an opinion on whatever the topic of discussion
happened to be. At that point, when they heard her southern accent,
she said they seemed to assume she was stupid. She said that she had
actually had people slow down their speech, as if they thought she
would not be able to understand them if they talked at their normal
rate. It made her her livid, even recounting it years after the
fact. She also stated that she had never made any attempt to alter
her accent, which she said she was proud of. I might add that the
five or six people listening to her story all concurred with the
appropriateness of her refusal to adapt her speech to a more northern
environment. (I found her accent very pleasant.)
>
>>>>>It seems to me that there is a fundamental difference in the
>performance of the human speech mechanisms and the human ear. >
>[snip]

But we are not so good at hearing. I am amazed at the number of times
people say "What?" or "Huh?" in ordinary conversation (myself
included).

>I am amazed at the things that people mispronounce because they
>mishear them. My fourth-grade teacher corrected a girl in our class
who said "chicken pops" instead of "chicken pox." I think no one had
ever corrected her before because they didn't hear the difference. I
hear a lot of people say "step foot" instead of "set foot" -- there
is a kind of logic to it, but I think it's simple mishearing. A lot of
>people say "hone in" instead of "home in." Some will argue these are
correct --I'm not discussing grammar here -- but even if they are
widespread enough to be "correct," I still think they arose from the
mishearing of the original forms.

Here are a few mishearings that my brother and I have discussed:
1. "Bardstown, KY" is frequently called "Bargetown, KY"
2. X fails to hear Y, who then asks, "Are you death?" meaning "deaf"
of course.
3. "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear" is not a large, furry animal with
an ocular problem and a peculiar moniker, but the hymn, "Gladly, the
Cross I'd Bear."
4. "Old-timers" for "Alzheimers."

This is a different situation, but, as an attorney, the amount of
mangled legal terminology I hear is impressive. Here are two common
examples:
1. "Write this contract up good. I don't want to be reliable."
(from a local plumber).
2. "He 'frauded' me. (meaning "defrauded.")

Again, another subject (the problems of English spelling), seen just
today in a letter written by a new client (currently incarcerated) to
a judge: "Judge, I can't spill that great..." (for "spell" There
seems to be a special irony in mispelling the word "spell.") In
reading this man's letter, which he called a "latter," he made
somewhat consistent mistakes in basic vowel phonemes, which left me
curious about what was going on in his writing. Is he attempting to
spell his dialect, does he have no visual or aural memory, or is it
something else?
>
[snip]
When I pronounce a word, I "know" what I am saying. I command my
tongue, and it pretty much does what I tell it. When I utter two
sounds that are close together, I "know" which is which -- not by
listening to what comes out of my mouth, but by my thoughts and
intentions, and more importantly, tactile feedback inside my mouth
and throat.
>
>Now, here is the catch: I can utter two sounds which in my speech are
>nearly the same, and I know them apart. (Part of this may be that
>sound
>is conducted through the inside of my head -- which is why our voices
>sound different to us on tape). But I can actually record MY OWN
>speech onto a tape and listen to it... and I can't distinguish those
>sounds anymore! To me, this supports my theory that in general, "the
>tongue works better than the ear."
>
>[snip]
>>And I think that the faulty operation of human hearing is one of
the biggest reasons that languages change and we have dialects in the
first place.

1. I disagree with the foregoing. I am not that knowledgable about
the history of language change, but, if memory serves me correctly,
German has undergone major sound shifts in a relatively short time
period on at least two occasions that we are aware of. Were the
Germans mishearing more during those particular time periods than
they were during other periods when the sounds changed much more
slowly?
>
>2. That speech is more accurate than hearing does not seem so
amazing to me. And I do not feel this is an indictment of our
ability to hear. There is a direct physiological connection between
your brain and your the parts of your body which produce audible
speech. Presumably, there is no background "noise" present in the
nerves that transmit the brain's intention (converted to electrical
signals) to the vocal cords, lips, tongue, etc., which could
interfere with the correct production of a phoneme. So the brain
never sends the instructions for a "t" down the line to have the data
corrupted enroute with the result that another phoneme is produced by
the tongue. I assume most of us occasionally produce spoonerisms,
but I imagine that is due to improper coding in the brain at the
start of the process rather than a corruption of correct data down
the line before it reaches the tongue.

On the other hand, hearing does not involve a direct connection. It
involves a small diaphragm of tissue intercepting a rapid series of
minute air pressure changes emanating from a speaker, correctly
translating those pressure changes into electrical signals and then
correctly transmitting those signals to the brain. The brain must
then interpret those brief electrical pulses as phonemes, combine
them into words, and, through syntax, finally produce meaning. It
would seem to me that there are numerous places where this chain of
understanding can break down.

When we are talking, at least for most of us, we are thinking about
what we plan to say next, and some part of our brains is ordering the
phonemes in the sequence in which they are needed. But when we are
listening, the number of distractions which can interfere with
accurate hearing are legion: we are planning what we want to say
next, we just remembered we need to pick up milk and bread from the
store on the way home, the announcer on CNN (playing in the
background) just mentioned "interns" and "sex" together, a teen-ager
with a boom-box blaring just walked by.

This clearly seems to be a much dicier a prospect to me than
speaking. I think we actually have a fairly amazing, albeit, not
perfect, ability to extract the intended meaning from a rapidly
changing series of brief sounds through the background clutter of
everyday life. We have the ability to focus on the person talking to
the exclusion of the rest of the aural environment.

If you record a conversation, in which you take part, in virtually
any setting outside of a recording studio, and in which you have no
trouble hearing the other parties speaking, I would be willing to bet
that upon playing that recording back, you will be started by the
amount of ambient sound present, which your brain, essentially,
ignored while listening to the speaker.

I tried this myself once at Sunday dinner at my grandmother's house.
We had finished eating, and I talked my grandmother into telling a
couple of stories from her childhood at the turn of the century,
while I recorded her on tape. Later that night at home, I listened
to my recording and was astonished at the amount of noise on the
tape, coughs, rustling clothes, rattling dishes, asides by someone at
the table to someone else, etc. that took place during my
grandmother's stories. Yet, even on the recording, I could still
understand every word she had uttered. But while I was recording
her, I was virtually unaware of the surrounding noise because I was
focused on her. By the way, she is gone now, and that is the only
recording I have of her voice.>
>
>And my father comes from an area perhaps even more linguistically
>diverse.
>Some things I have heard from him are: Thomas = "tawmas" rather than
>"tahmas"; Cooper with an oo as in book, not as in fool;

My father uses the same "oo" sound for Gary Cooper or chicken coop.
He also uses a short "e" for "depot," whereas my brothers and I use a
long "e." (deepot)

My father and mother pronounced words ending in "ture," such
as "literature," or "mature" with a "t" phoneme in the last syllable,
rather than "ch." My four brothers and I use "ch" for these words
yet we grew up only thirty miles from my parents' childhood homes.
>We always presumed the common pronunciation changed from the time my
parents were children and my brothers and I were. Or, perhaps, it
had more to do with the woman who taught English at the high school
in their small town.


>Paige
>
>
>
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Daniel (and all)

Of course there are no "good" dialects and "bad" dialects. Of course, most
modern European languages today are a result of dialects of
Proto-Indo-European...

Cheers.


- .+'^'+. A.M.Callaway -------------
- A N D Y Melbourne, Australia -----
- `+.,.+' www.ozemail.com.au/~acal -

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Oh, no, Daniel...

Please don't apologize to me -- I was trying to apologize to
you! ;)

I do sometimes have a tendency to look down on people or
make fun of them -- something I am trying to work on.

I certainly took no offense whatever at anything you said...
I just took it as a gentle reproof and thought perhaps I
should clarify my meaning...

You always have insights for this group, and I enjoy reading
your posts... and honestly, there was not a milligram of
hard feelings on my part.

Have a great day,
Hal

--- In shavian@..., "Daniel G. Szczurek" <twojbrat@w...>
wrote:
> Dear Hal,
> I'm sorry if my note caused you any hard feelings. I intended
them only
> as general comments on dialect research and examination of the
principles of
> dialectology. I sincerely apologize to you for any bad feelings I
called
> you.
> The example of insensitivity I have in my mind is that because
of which
> we got a lecture on linguistics in ethics, not your remarks, which I
find
> interesting.
> A dialect student was once working in New York City. He studied
social
> dialects in detail, and one of his informants was a well-off woman.
He
> studied her dialect and found that she displayed a "low class"
dialect, not
> the upper class dialect that she tought she used. The student went
on and on
> about it, and even played tapes for the woman. She became depressed
and
> avoided her friends. Eventually she killed herself, because she
couldn't
> face the humiliation of having been found out to be of "low class"
origin.
> The moral was: When you study someone's language, you are studying
their
> personal lives and their self-image. So, watch out what you do and
say.
> I don't think anyone on this discussion would hurt another
person. I
> take your comments as objective, and I think everyone else does. If
I hurt
> your feelings,it was not on purpose. I ask your forgiveness.
> Your linguistic thoughts are insightful. I have just been
putting them
> in terms that come up in formal linguistics classes, to affirm that
what
> you're saying is solid linguistics, even if you are not a formally
trained
> linguist. I hope that you will continue your informal linguistics
studies
> and keep the data in an organized form for the use of later
linguists.
> Apologetically, Dan



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Greetings all,

After wandering many paragraphs into a field of study
in which I have no training, :) it seemed appropriate
to post something more on-topic.

I've created the beginnings of a web page... I may move it
to a subdirectory later, so it's probably not good to
link to it right now.

It's at: http://hypermetrics.com/shaw.html

There is not much content there yet.

Notes:

1. There are a couple of links that I reently found that
I haven't seen anyone else linked to -- the University
of Bath and the person transliterating the King James
Bible. Just as a matter of interest.

2. I've probably violated a copyright by posting images
from _Androcles and the Lion_... if anyone chastises me
severely enough, I can take them off.

3. The Software and Fonts sections will contain all the
software and fonts I am aware of, just for redundancy.
Of course, none of these is my work, and I will give
proper attribution for everything. And, of course, if
anyone wishes their files NOT to be stored on my server,
I won't put them there.

4. As I was creating this, I realized that there is so
much overlap between these web pages. Of course, some
people like Simon Barne have some really original content.
I'll try to add some things that make this one worth the
electrons. (On reviewing some of the web pages, I've
noticed that many, including mine, start out with Shaw
dying in 1950. Poor G.B.! The most important thing he
ever did was to drop dead... Joke! That's a JOKE!)

5. The section for sound files (currently empty) is an
attempt to work around the impossible task of describing
a sound in writing. When I want to illustrate my own
dialect, I'll be able to refer any interested parties
to the WAV files on the page. (I encourage others to do
the same if they're willing... I've considered the idea
of a list of, say, thirty words that we could all record
as benchmarks of our pronunciation.)

Anyhow, comments and criticisms are welcome.

Hal



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Hal Fulton wrote:
> I've created the beginnings of a web page... I may move it
> to a subdirectory later, so it's probably not good to
> link to it right now.
>
> It's at: http://hypermetrics.com/shaw.html
>
> There is not much content there yet.

Have you considered moving that to shawalphabet.org or shavian.org? That is
sort of what they were created for, I believe (well, I can only speak for
shavian.org, but at the moment shawalphabet.org just redirects to
shavian.org).

You're more than welcome to move your files to shavian.org, should you
choose to do so, and set up shop there. I think 10 MB of storage is my limit
there.

Just a thought.

Cheers,
Philip

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