Sergei writes:
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
Sergei, your glottopsychological idiosyncrasy isn't only due to a
phonological variation related to a particular Slavic language. Here in
the US, it also can be regional. I grew up in the Merrimack Valley
north of Boston, MA and most of the folks with whom I attended lower
school and high school dropped the "r" in words like "father" and added
an "r" to the ends of words such as Korea. Perhaps the culprit of this
idiosyncrasy can be attributed to a Slavic language but I also think
geography plays an important role. And it becomes very difficult to
ascertain whether my Slavic friends and relatives, my Baltic friends and
relatives, or my Italian, Irish, British, Scots, Polish, Russian, etc.
friends learned it from their ancestors or from their acquaintences.
When I moved to CA after college, I was used as an "example of a New
England speech pattern" when I first began teaching at San Juan High
School. For the most part, I have lost most of my "accent" but on
occasion it does creep on through.
Gerry
--
Gerald Reinhart
Independent Scholar
(650) 321-7378
waluk@...
http://www.alekseevmanuscript.com