Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlearn

[Vijay]

I'm willing to believe that it doesn't stigmatize dialects as much as some other countries at least do, but does it really recognize them as different languages? I thought they were all just considered dialects of Norwegian and that none of them had official recognition.

[Travis B.]

I'm willing to believe that it doesn't stigmatize dialects as much as some other countries at least do, but does it really recognize them as different languages? I thought they were all just considered dialects of Norwegian and that none of them had official recognition.

Norway has two standard languages, Bokmål and Nynorsk, with Bokmål being based largely off heavily Danish-influenced varieties of southeastern Norway and Nynorsk being based largely off western Norwegian dialects, but I am not sure if anyone actually considers them two separate languages as opposed to just two separate standards.

[Travis B.]

The thing is that I suspect creating standards and orthographies for smaller dialects will hurt even smaller dialects. Consider English; no one treats the current English orthography as an indicator of how to speak English and the current standard English does not really concern itself with pronunciation, thus for dialects like my own it exerts little pressure on their phonology*. But if a new standardized phonemic orthography were created for General American and were promoted by the US government as the new Standard American English, then suddenly that would be a new standardized way to speak any NAE variety spoken in the US, and especially varieties related more closely to GA (namely Midwestern and Western varieties), which would exert much more pressure on my own dialect (which, despite how I transcribe it, is essentially closely related to GA) than the current standard written English does.

* mind you, the primary way English varieties differ is in their phonology

[Salmoneus]

There have long been lingua francas, sure. World lingua francas not so much. But I think English might well be the first such language (due to the US's unique status as world hyperpower), which AFAIAC, encourages even more the damage against all other language varieties. And at least some of the damage it has done can be reversed.

Actually, I think EAALF may help minority languages.
If you speak a small minority language on the border of, say, the Swahili area, there's a lot of pressure to learn Swahili to communicate with your neighbours. But if you do learn Swahili, your own language is threatened: you know so many people who speak Swahili, all your neighbours speak Swahili, the benefit of maintaining your own language diminishes and you're tempted just to switch to monolingual Swahili. If, on the other hand, your government services and a couple of traders and administrators living among your neighbours speak English, you can learn English instead of Swahili. But since relatively few people around you speak English, and none speak it natively, the pressure to become monolingual in English is much smaller. You're much more likely to switch to a language that is both a lingua franca and natively spoken in your area (and perhaps related to your own language), than you are to switch to an alien lingua france that nobody you know speaks natively.

So I think that, in a way, having a 'neutral' third-party language that can be recoursed to may help small languages survive encroachment by larger regional languages.

It probably particularly applies to dialects and closely-related small languages. If you and I speak two related but divergent language forms, we'll feel pressure to level out our differences so that we can communicate easily with one another. But if we have a neutral third language we can resort to whenever confusion arises, then most of the time we're able to maintain out own individual language forms.

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Having said that... I suspect English will render some languages extinct. Small local lingua francas, for one thing, which will lose their raison d'etre if a bigger lingua franca comes along.

[Vijay]

It has already made tons of languages go extinct, and there is no end in sight to the process AFAICT, but yes, there are some positive effects of having English as a lingua franca as well.

[Travis B.]

Also consider the case of Latin. In its initial expansion it made many languages go extinct, but later on, things were better for minority languages in Europe when Latin was the lingua franca than later than that when standardized national languages came along such as Standard French, Standard German, and Standard Spanish which to a large extent marginalized minority languages in large parts of Europe.

[jmcd]

I'm willing to believe that it doesn't stigmatize dialects as much as some other countries at least do, but does it really recognize them as different languages? I thought they were all just considered dialects of Norwegian and that none of them had official recognition.

It would appear that I messed up my post: I meant to write 'without', not 'with'.

Actually, I think EAALF may help minority languages.
If you speak a small minority language on the border of, say, the Swahili area, there's a lot of pressure to learn Swahili to communicate with your neighbours. But if you do learn Swahili, your own language is threatened: you know so many people who speak Swahili, all your neighbours speak Swahili, the benefit of maintaining your own language diminishes and you're tempted just to switch to monolingual Swahili. If, on the other hand, your government services and a couple of traders and administrators living among your neighbours speak English, you can learn English instead of Swahili. But since relatively few people around you speak English, and none speak it natively, the pressure to become monolingual in English is much smaller. You're much more likely to switch to a language that is both a lingua franca and natively spoken in your area (and perhaps related to your own language), than you are to switch to an alien lingua france that nobody you know speaks natively.

So I think that, in a way, having a 'neutral' third-party language that can be recoursed to may help small languages survive encroachment by larger regional languages.

I think it works better in theory than in practise, the practise being usually more of an additional pressure rather than an alternative one.

It probably particularly applies to dialects and closely-related small languages. If you and I speak two related but divergent language forms, we'll feel pressure to level out our differences so that we can communicate easily with one another. But if we have a neutral third language we can resort to whenever confusion arises, then most of the time we're able to maintain out own individual language forms.

It seems that borders, in the modern essential world, have something to do with it: Danes and Swedes are willing to interact with their native tongues even at a formal level without a lingua franca intermediary which is not necessarily the case in other countries despite the possiblity.

Also consider the case of Latin. In its initial expansion it made many languages go extinct, but later on, things were better for minority languages in Europe when Latin was the lingua franca than later than that when standardized national languages came along such as Standard French, Standard German, and Standard Spanish to a large extent marginalized minority languages in large parts of Europe.

This is certainly true. However, these standardised languages were soon followed by universal educations systems in these languages, and later mass media, which had a greater effect than the standardised languages otherwise would have. Also, Latin had no native speakers.

[Travis B.]

Actually, I think EAALF may help minority languages.
If you speak a small minority language on the border of, say, the Swahili area, there's a lot of pressure to learn Swahili to communicate with your neighbours. But if you do learn Swahili, your own language is threatened: you know so many people who speak Swahili, all your neighbours speak Swahili, the benefit of maintaining your own language diminishes and you're tempted just to switch to monolingual Swahili. If, on the other hand, your government services and a couple of traders and administrators living among your neighbours speak English, you can learn English instead of Swahili. But since relatively few people around you speak English, and none speak it natively, the pressure to become monolingual in English is much smaller. You're much more likely to switch to a language that is both a lingua franca and natively spoken in your area (and perhaps related to your own language), than you are to switch to an alien lingua france that nobody you know speaks natively.

So I think that, in a way, having a 'neutral' third-party language that can be recoursed to may help small languages survive encroachment by larger regional languages.

I think it works better in theory than in practise, the practise being usually more of an additional pressure rather than an alternative one.

Consider the case of India, where one major part of why English gets used so much there is precisely because it is seen as neutral, where using Hindi or any other Indian language would be perceived as favoritistic towards one group or another and threatening towards many Indians' own languages.

It probably particularly applies to dialects and closely-related small languages. If you and I speak two related but divergent language forms, we'll feel pressure to level out our differences so that we can communicate easily with one another. But if we have a neutral third language we can resort to whenever confusion arises, then most of the time we're able to maintain out own individual language forms.

It seems that borders, in the modern essential world, have something to do with it: Danes and Swedes are willing to interact with their native tongues even at a formal level without a lingua franca intermediary which is not necessarily the case in other countries despite the possiblity.

Mind you that, at least in writing, Standard Danish and Standard Swedish are close enough that Danes and Swedes can communicate in writing with them without any intermediary language.

Also consider the case of Latin. In its initial expansion it made many languages go extinct, but later on, things were better for minority languages in Europe when Latin was the lingua franca than later than that when standardized national languages came along such as Standard French, Standard German, and Standard Spanish to a large extent marginalized minority languages in large parts of Europe.

This is certainly true. However, these standardised languages were soon followed by universal educations systems in these languages, and later mass media, which had a greater effect than the standardised languages otherwise would have. Also, Latin had no native speakers.

That is true, but I do suspect there would have been a different outcome had universal education come about, but that universal education was in Latin rather than in Standard French or like. And also mind you that to very many people around the world, English is just as foreign if not more so than Latin was to Europeans during the Middle Ages, so the analogy still holds.

[Vijay]

I think it works better in theory than in practise, the practise being usually more of an additional pressure rather than an alternative one.

Consider the case of India, where one major part of why English gets used so much there is precisely because it is seen as neutral, where using Hindi or any other Indian language would be perceived as favoritistic towards one group or another and threatening towards many Indians' own languages.

And as a result, English threatens pretty much every Indian language instead.

[Travis B.]

And as a result, English threatens pretty much every Indian language instead.

But is it more threatening than Hindi would be were Hindi used everywhere English is used in India today?

[Vijay]

And as a result, English threatens pretty much every Indian language instead.

But is it more threatening than Hindi would be were Hindi used everywhere English is used in India today?

Hindi already is used everywhere English is used in India today anyway (well, in every part of India), even South India (even Tamil Nadu!), because Bollywood. So nope. (Granted, even then, it's not quite as pervasive as English is yet, though it has been gaining ground in recent years).

[jmcd]

Yeah, I had thought of India as an example. And thought of the significantly greater percentage of speakers Hindi had in the 2011 census compared to the 2001 one. And I think if the opponents of Hindi-only as union language didn't get English kept, they would 've demanded something else like 6 union languages or Tamil official or independence.

[Jonlang]

The only Welsh pronunciation that frustrates me as a learner is the fact that the word fy is pronounced yn or 'n and not [və] as it looks like it should be pronounced. It's about the only Welsh word which is pronounced nothing like its spelling

[kodé]

when i started learning arabic (MSA), i pronounced the emphatic consonants as retroflexes. it took a while to master the pharyngealization/uvularization (depending on who you speak to).

[Zaarin]

when i started learning arabic (MSA), i pronounced the emphatic consonants as retroflexes. it took a while to master the pharyngealization/uvularization (depending on who you speak to).

I still can't decipher or consciously form pharyngealization--despite having it in the form of /ɹ̠ˁ/.

[Ser]

Last week I heard "top-tier" pronounced for the first time, and I realized I had been pronouncing it wrong all this time. I had been saying /ˈtɑp ˈtaɪɚ/ when it should be /ˈtɑp ˈtiɚ/.

I told the person in front of me, "oh god I've been butchering /ˈbʌtʃəɹɪŋ/ it all this time!". The other person immediately said, "butchering! /ˈbʊtʃəɹɪŋ/".

And then that was two incorrect pronunciations to get rid of!

[Vijay]

I think I used to pronounce both of those exactly the same way as you.

[jmcd]

I wonder if there's a dialect of English where /ˈbʌtʃəɹ/ is the pronunciation used?

[Jonlang]

I wonder if there's a dialect of English where /ˈbʌtʃəɹ/ is the pronunciation used?

I think it's fairly close how some Scots might do it in rapid speech, but I couldn't pin-point which part of Scotland, but I'd guess somewhere between Glasgow and Edinburgh, more towards Edinburgh.

[jmcd]

I think I might have heard it before, yeah.

I didn"t think to google the IPA before. I got this on the Midlands.

[kodé]

when i started learning arabic (MSA), i pronounced the emphatic consonants as retroflexes. it took a while to master the pharyngealization/uvularization (depending on who you speak to).

I still can't decipher or consciously form pharyngealization--despite having it in the form of /ɹ̠ˁ/.

The best way is start with a heavily velarized English /l/ [5], and keep lowering the back of your tongue as far into your throat as you can while still having the tip of your tongue on the alveolar ridge. This is the tongue position for a pharyngealized coronal segment. Now just play with the manner of articulation and voicing and, voilà! If you try to make, say /tˁa/ and it turns out like [tˁA] or with the /a/ super backed and lowered, you've got it right.

[vokzhen]

when i started learning arabic (MSA), i pronounced the emphatic consonants as retroflexes. it took a while to master the pharyngealization/uvularization (depending on who you speak to).

I still can't decipher or consciously form pharyngealization--despite having it in the form of /ɹ̠ˁ/.

The best way is start with a heavily velarized English /l/ [5], and keep lowering the back of your tongue as far into your throat as you can while still having the tip of your tongue on the alveolar ridge. This is the tongue position for a pharyngealized coronal segment. Now just play with the manner of articulation and voicing and, voilà! If you try to make, say /tˁa/ and it turns out like [tˁA] or with the /a/ super backed and lowered, you've got it right.

FWIW, my (near-GA) dark /l/ is, from what I can tell, uvularized or upper pharyngealized, while /r/ is lower pharyngeal/epiglottal. Uvularized emphatics are common in Arabic, and I've run across papers that have argued, or even taken for granted, that "pharyngealization" is a traditional but inaccurate description.

[Vijay]

Yeah, I'm not sure I ever have my tongue actually touching the alveolar ridge when I make a dark l. (I have a long tongue, though. I'm also not sure to what extent that has to do with it. I think maybe for that reason, the front of my tongue touches my teeth instead).

[Travis B.]

Yeah, I'm not sure I ever have my tongue actually touching the alveolar ridge when I make a dark l. (I have a long tongue, though. I'm also not sure to what extent that has to do with it. I think maybe for that reason, the front of my tongue touches my teeth instead).

My /l/ at the start of a word or when geminate is [ʟ̞], i.e. velar and with no part of my tongue touching the top of my mouth.

[kodé]

when i started learning arabic (MSA), i pronounced the emphatic consonants as retroflexes. it took a while to master the pharyngealization/uvularization (depending on who you speak to).

I still can't decipher or consciously form pharyngealization--despite having it in the form of /ɹ̠ˁ/.

The best way is start with a heavily velarized English /l/ [5], and keep lowering the back of your tongue as far into your throat as you can while still having the tip of your tongue on the alveolar ridge. This is the tongue position for a pharyngealized coronal segment. Now just play with the manner of articulation and voicing and, voilà! If you try to make, say /tˁa/ and it turns out like [tˁA] or with the /a/ super backed and lowered, you've got it right.

FWIW, my (near-GA) dark /l/ is, from what I can tell, uvularized or upper pharyngealized, while /r/ is lower pharyngeal/epiglottal. Uvularized emphatics are common in Arabic, and I've run across papers that have argued, or even taken for granted, that "pharyngealization" is a traditional but inaccurate description.

yeah, I've read that about Arabic, too. the hard part is really distinguishing the two, since there's really a continuum between a back tongue body constriction with the uvula and a tongue root constriction with the pharynx. probably it's uvularized in some arabic languages, and pharyngealized in others.