Dropping 'er haitches

[pne]

I wonder whether Amy thinks she's learning Maltese, or maybe French or Spanish or something. At any rate, she seems to like dropping 'er haitches.

For example, ham and hammer become am and ama; what people have on their head is è; and the little spiky animal that can never be buggered at all is an eġġo.

On the other hand, her German word for bicycle is something along the lines of aha. But then, since Fahrrad doesn't have a pronounced h in it (the written letter here just serves as a mark that the first vowel is long), perhaps she's turning the r into a ħ and is really saying aħa... must be Maltese, then! :)

Comments

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

Maybe she's just a cockney?;)

[pne.livejournal.com]

I had considered that -- but don't they put in "haitches" sometimes, just in the "wrong" places?

Or is that only when Cockneys try to speak standard English but get it wrong, rather than when they speak their native variety?

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

Or is that only when Cockneys try to speak standard English but get it wrong, rather than when they speak their native variety?

I think so; I'm not even sure /h/ is a distinct phoneme in the idiolects of some Cockney speakers. There's an old joke about a Cockney couple:

"...we 'ad all hour children given names that start with a haitch. There's 'Enry, 'Arry, 'Arriet, 'Erbert, 'Enrietta and 'Orace. Hall hexcept the last one. We called 'er Halice."

[allegrox.livejournal.com]

Do you mean for ħ to have its IPA value (a voiceless pharyngeal fricative)? That also makes me wonder if the /r/ in Fahrrad might be pharyngealized. It seems to be when I say it, but my pronunciation is anything but native.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Do you mean for ħ to have its IPA value (a voiceless pharyngeal fricative)?

I wanted to give it the value that letter has in the Maltese orthography. I'm not certain, but I believe that it has the same value as ح in Arabic, which I think is indeed a voiceless pharyngeal fricative. (Though the way she pronounces it is not pharyngeal; it was just an attempt to keep in the Maltese scheme while picking an h-like sound that is pronounced in that language -- written "h", while deriving from a sound pronounced [h] in Arabic, is silent there in non-final position.)

That also makes me wonder if the /r/ in Fahrrad might be pharyngealized.

/r/ in German has several realisations, even in standard German, as far as I know. One of them is [r], but I'm not sure whether that's the most common. I pronounce it as some sort of fricative, probably the uvular fricative [ʁ]. I think [ʀ] (voiced uvular trill) is also used, and I've even heard a native speaker with an "English R" (is that [ɻ], retroflex approximant?), which he said was common in the region of German he came from.

[allegrox.livejournal.com]

"One of them is [r], but I'm not sure whether that's the most common."

I get the impression that it's primarily a Bavarian feature.

"I pronounce it as some sort of fricative, probably the uvular fricative [ʁ]."

My professor uses a uvular approximant, which I guess is more or less the same as the trill [ʁ], so that's what I've been using. And I haven't been paying close attention to it, but it's probably also labialized, so something like [ʁʷ].

" I think [ʀ] (voiced uvular trill) is also used, and I've even heard a native speaker with an "English R" (is that [ɻ], retroflex approximant?), which he said was common in the region of German he came from."

The trill makes me think of French. :) And I would say yes, American dialects at least tend to have a retroflex approximant. I think in the UK most people have something uvular, but I'm not sure.

German /r/

[pne.livejournal.com]

If I had to guess, I would say that the voiced uvular fricative is the most common realisation of German /r/ around here. (I still don't know what the most common is German-wide.)

[ifeedformula.livejournal.com]

J's speech therapist said it's common for kids learning to speak for them to often drop the first consanant until they have caught up and can pronounce things like H, SH, Fr, etc.