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Great Vowel Shift

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Re: Great Vowel Shift

#151

Post by jgwil2 »

henrikschroder wrote: post #146
tialaramex wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the good news is that lots of native English speakers don't know how to pronounce things either. Of course I know how to say all the words I speak frequently and hear others using - but if I use a word I haven't heard there's a risk I'll say it wrong. You just learn not to worry about it (the biggest problem really is when you unconsciously try to correct somebody else and realise you've got not basis for your as…

> never the "beach" because she's concerned she'll manage to make people think she said "bitch". Is her native language Spanish? It's really cool how you can have "blind spots" depending on your native language. To me, the difference between beach and bitch is huge , because my native language uses short and long vowels extensively, and there are tons of words that only differ in a single vowel length. But at the sam…

She could also be French, or a speaker of any other romance language, or really any language that doesn't have the vowel [ɪ]. For speakers of such languages, "beach" and "bitch," as well as "sheet" and "shit," can be very hard to distinguish from one another.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#152

Post by jgwil2 »

supergarfield wrote: post #92
irrational wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is a shame Spanish didn’t become the lingua franca since it does have almost a 1:1 spoken and written. Of course, it could have been worse. We could have ended up with French as the lingua franca (yes, I know what franca means) where there is almost no correlation between written and spoken language.

This might be somewhat subjective, as I don't know how you'd measure correlation between spoken and written, but French seems to have a much higher match between written and spoken language than English. Going from spelling to pronunciation in French follows (admittedly complex) rules that are rarely broken except for common words (or endings such as -ent). Vowel pronunciations for a given spelling are far more varia…

It's not subjective; French is better than English in this regard, and Spanish is better than French. English has more complex pronunciation rules and many, many more exceptions than those languages.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#153

Post by Bayart »

adamrezich wrote: post #98

related, but has anyone noticed younger Americans pronouncing a few specific types of words differently as of late? I'm 29 and grew up in the Midwest, so in my accent, when I say "button," the "tt" is nearly silent. however, at my last job doing remote web development, one guy who was a bit younger than me (and also American) would pronounce it "BUH 'in," with noticeable "stop" between the two syllables. I have since…

That sounds like the glottal stop you hear quite a bit in England. Bu'hu for "butter", wa'hu for "water" and so on. I've been in heated discussions with Englishmen arguing my pronouncing the Ts in the middle of words is incorrect. I personally hold to the notion that at the very least if you go to the length of putting the letter T *twice* in the same spot, it really wants to be pronounced.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#154

Post by matkoniecz »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #101
ajuc wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially its very large vocabulary Vocabulary isn't a problem IMHO. The fact that I have to learn each word twice (how to write it and how to say it) - is. I was learning German for 3 years at school. After the first month I had no problems with pronunciation. Now after almost 2 decades of not using it I can still pronounce any German word I see. I've been learning English since I was 10 or so. I'm 36 now. I stil…

It poses problem for native speakers as well. After all, there are no Spelling Bee competitions in France, or Germany ... or anywhere.

There are in Poland. I suspect that they are also elsewhere, any language will have at least some tricky words.

See https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Og%C3%B3lnopolskie_Dyktando

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#155

Post by matkoniecz »

tialaramex wrote: post #96
ajuc wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially its very large vocabulary Vocabulary isn't a problem IMHO. The fact that I have to learn each word twice (how to write it and how to say it) - is. I was learning German for 3 years at school. After the first month I had no problems with pronunciation. Now after almost 2 decades of not using it I can still pronounce any German word I see. I've been learning English since I was 10 or so. I'm 36 now. I stil…

So, the good news is that lots of native English speakers don't know how to pronounce things either. Of course I know how to say all the words I speak frequently and hear others using - but if I use a word I haven't heard there's a risk I'll say it wrong. You just learn not to worry about it (the biggest problem really is when you unconsciously try to correct somebody else and realise you've got not basis for your as…

> talk about liking the "seaside" never the "beach" because she's concerned she'll manage to make people think she said "bitch".

Thanks for that anecdote, I somehow thought that I am alone living with fear of that happening :)

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#156

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

I wonder if our new age of global culture and free information exchange will slow down language mutations?

Surely tons of existing movies and songs and other media should give a clear idea of a speaking norm so spoken language doesn't deviate much from it. Or it doesn't?

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#157

Post by jgwil2 »

eindiran wrote: post #135
irrational wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is a shame Spanish didn’t become the lingua franca since it does have almost a 1:1 spoken and written. Of course, it could have been worse. We could have ended up with French as the lingua franca (yes, I know what franca means) where there is almost no correlation between written and spoken language.

The phoneme-grapheme correspondence in Spanish is better than English, but let's not pretend it is 1:1. Does it account for assimilation in rapid speech? Does it account for coarticulation of adjacent consonants? Does it account for regional/dialectal variation? Does it account for secondary articulation? Even ignoring all of these, its clearly not bijective. For example: C --> /k/, /θ/ Z --> /θ/ [0] K --> /k/ Q -->…

Most of these examples are unambiguous in context. For example, C is always pronounced /k/ when preceding A, O, U, and always pronounced /s/ or /θ/ depending on the dialect when preceding E and I.

The function from written Spanish to spoken Spanish (provided we are talking about a single dialect) is surjective, but darn close to bijective, especially if we exclude words of recent foreign origin.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#158

Post by Bayart »

orwin wrote: post #58
soldehierro wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of Spanish, I can't speak for French, having an academy (the RAE in this case) regulating the language sounds like a problem on paper, but really isn't a problem in practice. The RAE accepts Americanisms and treats American Spanish just as it would European Spanish (referring to the continent(s), not the country) and encourages lingusitic diversity. Anglicisms are only discouraged when an acceptable Spani…

I which french academy was this tolerant.

The problem of the French Academy isn't that it's intolerant, there are linguistic bodies in Europe that are far more conservative, it's that it's too slow and simply cannot keep up.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#160

Post by AareyBaba »

mason55 wrote: post #73
ajuc wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially its very large vocabulary Vocabulary isn't a problem IMHO. The fact that I have to learn each word twice (how to write it and how to say it) - is. I was learning German for 3 years at school. After the first month I had no problems with pronunciation. Now after almost 2 decades of not using it I can still pronounce any German word I see. I've been learning English since I was 10 or so. I'm 36 now. I stil…

> I still have many English words I know (and use correctly in writing) that I'm not sure how to pronounce. Do you mind sharing some examples? As a native English speaker, I'm so curious! Do you think that if you heard them without seeing the word you'd realize what the written form was? Or might there be words where you know the written form and the spoken form and don't realize it's the same word?

Some examples from I Love Lucy : https://youtu.be/uZV40f0cXF4?t=9
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