Amy goes to ITTEA

[pne]

Amy loves IKEA; at least, she's often pretending to be going there, either herself or her Fisher-Price or Playmobil little people.

She has a unique pronunciation of that word: [it.tea]—and it's not a geminate [t:] since the first [t] is very definitely released before the second one starts. I've no idea where that pronunciation comes from, though.

Comments

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

Do you find that her pronunciations are changing almost daily at this point? I'm sort of amazed at how Maggie's pronunciations migrate toward "correct" quite rapidly, sometimes within hours or even minutes. I had two great examples of that come up this weekend, and sadly at the moment I can remember neither of them. This morning she said "tock a loodle ooo," followed minutes later by "cock a doodle doo." I said nothing to influence her pronunciation one way or the other in between the two.

It's fairly common in German, is it not, for each of two "t"s in the middle of a word to be enunciated? I seem to recall a German professor chiding a classmate for a lazy pronunciation of "Mittag."

[pne.livejournal.com]

It's fairly common in German, is it not, for each of two "t"s in the middle of a word to be enunciated? I seem to recall a German professor chiding a classmate for a lazy pronunciation of "Mittag."

Not in my speech, no. Double consonants aren't even simply held longer, as in Italian, for example.

As for me, double consonants and single consonants are pronounced identically; they're mostly an orthographic device indicating that the preceding vowel is to be pronounced "short". For example, "rote Rotte" (red horde/pack/gang) has the same, single [t] in both words, at least for me, and the difference is purely in the vowel ([o:] vs. [O]). Similarly with "Mitte" vs. "Miete", for example.

Pretty much as in English, in fact -- "bitter" and "biter" differ only in the vowel, not the consonant (at least for me).

[pne.livejournal.com]

Do you find that her pronunciations are changing almost daily at this point?

Not quite daily! But I have noticed some recent changes, though I can't think of any concrete examples right now, either.

[entirelysonja.livejournal.com]

Erika sometimes pronounces some of the vowels in "IKEA" in English and some of the vowels in German. It's very strange.

[pthalo]

Hungarian has a t like that. When you see it written tt, both t's are pronounced seperately. So "szeretem" and "szerettem" are pronounced differently (one with 1 t and one with 2 t's.) The b in jobb is pronounced twice. etc. it took me a while to be able to pronounce two stops in succession like that. But for a Hungarian it's as natural as pronouncing an m long