Re: [tied] Re: Franco-Provençal

>
> That clip, "Leids voor beginners", is meant as humor, is it not? I
> found it very amusing.

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In fact, it was Dan Rather for CBS trying to learn Arabic,
in case AlQaida wins !

A.

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But yes, their /r/ is stunningly similar,

> almost identical, to American /r/, and it seems in all positions, not
> just final or before consonants like the pronunciation among most
> Dutch speakers I've heard (e.g. Mirren's "worden" with the long
> schwa). Nevertheless, because similar [r]'s can be found throughout
> England, I would doubt that the Dutch are definitively the cause of
> the American pronunciation of /r/. BTW, many linguists say that the
> commonest [r] in the U.S.A. is not actually retroflex [r] but what
> they call "bunched /r/", whose articulation I'm not really sure of but
> I think involves contracting the tongue into an arch, pointing the tip
> downward, and articulating the approximant somewhere close to the hard
> palate. Nevertheless the Leids /r/ is indistinguishable to me.
>
> Andrew
>