Colonial /r/'s

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:

> On 05-03-03 12:34, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > So I proposed that the American
> > retroflex /r/ came from a substandard Dutch-based 17-18th c. New
> > York dialect, which became the language of the new immigrants to

New

> > York, whence it spread as the standard dialect to the rest of

the US

> > (minus New England, which drops /r/'s, and Southern, which does
> > likewise. Miguel objected strongly to that idea.
>
> American /r/ varies in the phonemic continuum between "retroflex"
> (sublamino-postalveolar) and "bunched" (dorso-midpalatal), the

latter

> variant prevailing by far, despite the popular opinion that

American /r/

> is retroflex. I suspect that the two alleles, which are all but
> indistinguishable to the ear (except that their coarticulatory

effects

> may be different), naturally tend to occur in free variation.

Similar

> realisations are common in SW England (in the former "West Saxon"

area)

> and in Ireland, and I have little doubt that this is where

American /r/

> came from.
>

Of course a large part of the immigrants were Irish, and a large
number probably also came from SW England, but what reason would
there be for everyone else to want to imitate the /r/'s? If on the
other hand a Dutch-substrate influenced substandard New York
sociolect became standard by reverse snobbery ("at least it isn't
British!") after the Revolution, for every immigrant passing through
New York (at least until New York /r/'s turned to diphthongs) this
would be their first impression of the new language and this would
be what he learned.
Occasionally, knowing other Germanic languages than English I come
across words and expressions that sound very similar to some I know
in those languages, but 'science' (the local one) tells me these
expressions have perfectly natural explanations from within English.
I suspect sometimes they just aren't aware of those parallels in
other languages.

Eg. to snow "cheat" sby. (heard on Frasier Crane) cf Danish snyde,
Swedish snuva "cheat".

toss-pot (some Australian sitcom) cf. Danish tosse "idiot, fool",
and cf Danish gnavpot "sourpuss".


Torsten