From: Richard Wordingham
Message: 70351
Date: 2012-10-31
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "shivkhokra" <shivkhokra@> wrote:I just wondered if it could have been brought back from India like pyjamas, bungalows and mulligatawny soup, and such words as 'pukka' and even the suffix '-wallah'.
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
> > <richard.wordingham@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Where did the retroflex in English [t`ri:] <tree> come from?
> > > (Actually, I tend to use the affricate /tS/ in such words rather
> > > than a retroflex stop.)
> > Most likely from Sanskrit Taru which means a tree.
> Good heavens, people, this is elementary English _phonetics_.
> retroflexed by anticipation of the retroflexed English /r/. Thus there is a distinction
> in the pronunciation of "tree" (retro.) vs. "tea" (alveolar). Another ex. would be
> "party" vs. "potty" (at least in standard American English; British Engl. would differ.
> This is called allophony!
>
> And as Mr. Wordingham points out, he (and many Americans of my acquaintance) have an
> affricate [tS] in the env. initial /tr-/ and sometimes medial /-VtrV-/.
>
> From correspondence with linguistic knowledgeable friends in Sweden, apparently the same
> or similar conditions cause (or caused) retroflexes to arise in that language.
>
> My own field is Indonesian linguistics. Only Javanese and closely-related Madurese have
> phonemic retroflexed /t., d./. The courtly/literary language Old Javanese is full of retroflexes,
> mainly in Sanskrit borrowings, but apparently the language also had some native retroflexes,
> and Dempwolff ("Vergleichende Lautlehre..." 1934-38) reconstructed retro. *t. and *d. in
> his Ur-Austronesisch. But present-day scholars have deprecated those reconstructions,
> and hold that the distinct Dempwolffian correspondences (e.g. in Tagalog, but almost
> nowhere else) are due to borrowings from Malay and other early trade languages,
> as well as native developments within the Philippines. And Proto-Austronesian is now
> reconstructed with just a single *t and *d.
>
> Most of the Indonesian languages I'm familiar with (in particular Malay/Bahasa
> Indonesia) have dental /t/ vs. alveolar /d/. Javanese and Malay have a long history of
> mutual influence, as well as on other IN. languages. When Ml/BI or other
> Indonesian languages borrow a Javanese word with a retroflex, it becomes their /t/
> or /d/. None of the literature I've read has any mention of retroflexed consonants anywhere.
>
> As for the British in India, let's just say that they considered themselves a "superior"
> race and never really assimilated to Indian culture, however much they may have learnt
> about it and, indeed, appreciated it. They did not intend to become permanent residents
> and spend the rest of their lives there, and so had no reason to learn the native languages "perfectly".
>
> Consider the situation of Indian/Pakistani immigrants here in the US. Like all
> previous immigrants, the parents speak English (often quite fluently) with a distinct old-
> country accent. Their children, however, learn "proper" US English is school and from
> playmates (and so on for succeeding generations) and retain little or no trace of their
> ultimate non-native origin. A perfect case in point in Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana,
> whose parents came from India. He not only speaks quite ordinary Amer. English,
> but has even, if I'm not mistaken, become a Christian. There's a good case of assimilation!
>
> (Sorry if this message comes through a bit garbled; for some reason line-wrap wasn't working.
>