Dear
Mark,
I'm a native speaker
of Russian, and Lithuanian is my second language (and my native-speaking wife
says I speak with no accent :), so I'll dare comment this native-speaker's
remark.
Of course he (or
she) is wrong and seemes to be not much into phonology. Your American
alveolar flap is far away from vibrant (rolled) [r] which we find in Russian
and Lithuanian (with no phonetic differencies between them in that point),
as well as in other Slavic languages. The standard practical recommendation the
teachers of American dialect give to the speakers of Russian and Lithuanian
is to try to pronounce 'weak d' in words like city etc, and
that's exactly the sound my Russian ear hears here.
The reason of
involving R/L [r] here by this person with his rather mysterious
glottopsychological idiosyncrasy could be that this sound, being extremely
weakened, may lose its vibrant characteristics and begin to resemble
something like Japanese [r] or even sound close to 'hard' [l], and it's not far
away from alveolar flap now. But such a weakening is extremely unnatural thing
both in R and L even in allegro forms, and is considered to be rather speech
defect (like those with child).
Sergei
This is
somewhat off topic, but a native-speaker of Lithuanian made this comment
on another forum which I follow:
Yes, a clear Russian or Lithuanian
"r" can be heard in "shutup" so I make use of it when trying to imitate
native speakers.
The context is how English tends to 'drop' certain internal
and word-final Ts and Ds, making 'shut up' sound (to an eye spelling)
something like shuh-up, shaw-up. The same thing can happen with -nt- and
-nd- though nasalization is the cause of the apparent
disappearance.
Most native-speakers of my particular brand of AmE (Northern
Midlands with some California, and New York) actually move the tongue
into position for the T or D, and even make the connection with the alveolar
ridge, but it is nonetheless often inaudible. It's the 'tap' which makes
'ladder' and 'latter' homophones, or makes 'internet' sound like 'inner net'
to an untrained ear.
I'm curious about this Lithuanian or Russian, R, however.
Any comments from the Balto-Slavicists? There seems to be a lesson in
phonology here, and what might happen in an adstratal context.
Mark.
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