[tied] Re: uvular R

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tgpedersen@...
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 4:00 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: uvular R
>
>
> One of the joys of being Danish is that I don't have to pronounce

an apical /r/ which I am incapable of (at least the trilled version)
for whatever reason; the closest I get is a right-side (dextro-?)
lateral trill. Since I've never had to pronounce it before I learned
English at school (at about the same time I started breaking
fluorescent

> tubes for fun on a nearby garbage dump) I don't know for certain

when I acquired this incapability.

>
> But I have wondered whether the to non-linguists so important

concept of "guttural" has anything to do with it?

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> Of course the apical rhotic that is essential to a passable English
accent is the untrilled continuant (written as upside-down "r" in
IPA) -- that is, unless your chosen model is a slightly overdone
variety of Scottish English. A brief course in practical phonetics
often works miracles in apparently hopeless cases -- as I know from
first-hand experience, having taught English and general phonetics to
several groups of first-year students.
>
> If "guttural" has a technical meaning at all, it means "concerning
the back of the mouth or the throat", and refers to such places of
articulation as velar, uvular, pharyngeal or glottal (these precise
terms are of course preferable). In its popular non-technical meaning
the word describes a vague range of auditory impressions and means
something like "harsh, grating" or just "foreign-sounding,
incomprehensible". I've often seen Polish and other Slavic languages
described as "guttural" for God knows what reason. Dammit, despite my
uvular [R] I don't get inordinately guttural even after a few
vodkas ;-)
>
> Piotr
>
>
>
>
That's not really what I meant; I was wondering whether "people"
somehow were connecting "guttural" (perceived or real) speech with
the behavior of (minimally) brain-damaged people, prophets and the
like.
I recall a British TV-series "A Family at War" way back in the
sixties. The main character, English working class, listens to a
speech on the radio by a certain German Reichschancellor (he
understands no German of course).
Then he switches off the radio and says: "Guttural, I think they call
it". In other words it is to rejected, not because of its unpleasant
content, but because of its gutturalness.
Therefore, when English monoglots call Danish (or Polish, for that
matter) "guttural" I get nervous. Somehow it has implications of:
whatever is said in that language, it can't be right.

Torsten