Re: American dialects, correction

From: Marco Moretti
Message: 30478
Date: 2004-02-02

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> Amsterdam and Rotterdam Dutch has retroflex r's, as does
> Standard American, _unlike_ New England and Southern.
>
>
> Torsten

In most American dialects there are two different rhotics:
one, retroflex, is the native, inerited /r/, while a trilled rhotic
sound corresponds ot inherited /t/ or /d/ in intervocalic position.
So, words like "rain", "road", "range" have the retroflex, while
"bottom", "body", "bottle" have an intervocalic trilled /r/:
/baram/, /bare/, /baro/ (with central short /a/).
Even in external samdhi there is a similar development:
"shut-up" is /s^@r@/, "get in" is /giri'n/
I and many friends of mine hear this clearly articulated, but if
I say it to any American speaker he denies this angrily.
Strange sound changes are in act in American and in Australian
dialects, despite of the tyrannical power of school, and within a
century we'll have quite different languages derived from English.

Regards

Marco