[tied] Re: Franco-Provençal

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:

> --- On Wed, 2/18/09, Francesco Brighenti <frabrig@...> wrote:
>
> . . .
> >
> > 1) Does the fact that, just to make an instance, many Irish,
> > Germans and so forth were among the early colonizers of the east
> > coast of the present U.S.A. have any bearing on the process of
> > formation of the different varieties of English spoken in the
> > U.S.A. today?
>
> Definitely, American English probably kept final /r/ dues to the
> large Scots and Irish presence, as well as the Germans, who tended
> to learn prescriptive English at school --hence Midwestern English
> as the US standard

Try listening to the retroflex /r/ of this sample of Leids (from
Leyden) dialect, eg in 'woord' at 0:10.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbuJpyfEqFw
To my ear, that /r/ is closer to the Standard American /r/ than
anything I've heard in Scots.


Torsten