Dora in Irish

[pne]

Amy had borrowed a Dora the Explorer DVD from the neighbours.

One of the soundtracks was Irish, and this morning, I decided to watch an episode of it in Irish, mostly to see what it sounds like. Not that I understood much :)

Though I did learn one word: "egg" is apparently something like "uv", though I don't know how it's spelled. (The episode was "Egg Hunt", so it popped up a fair bit in isolation.) And in Spanish, the frequent word in that context was "cascarone", though I'm not sure what it means since it's not the regular word for "egg" TTBOMK.

And I picked up "ferim" / "anyerim" which is apparently "farm / the farm" (again, no idea about the spelling, though it was amusing to pick out the alternation between what must be "f" /f/ vs. "fh" /(zero)/ after the definite article).

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Relatedly, I was a bit disappointed that in the German soundtrack, Dora talked about looking for "special ecks" -- the speaker wasn't able to get rid of her native German Auslautverhärtung when speaking English.

And in the end, when they were counting the eggs, Dora said "three" but when everyone around her repeated it, I heard "sree". (And in the Irish-with-Spanish, Dora said "/θ/inco", "die/θ/", and "on/θ/e" while the others repeated "/s/inco", "die/s/", and "on/s/e", though that's not native-vs-non-native but a regional difference. Still a bit odd that they didn't all speak the same way.)

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Relatedly, the sequence /θs/ as in, for example, "months" is pretty difficult for Germans to say.

Many Germans can't say [θ] at all and substitute another sound, often [s]. So when you have [θs] that turns into [s] and you hear "monce".

Others can say [θ], but it takes a bit of effort -- enough that they can't switch quickly from that unfamiliar phone to the [s] which is what they're trying to avoid saying, so you hear "month" (the [s] disappears).

Hearing a German pronounce [θs] in such words means they've got an unusually good command of English phonology, I would say.

(But then, I have similar shibboleths in my foreign languages, such as in the Greek combination [γr] -- a trilled [r] isn't in my native phoneme set and I can't do a good job. I think I can't manage an apical trill at all, so I make do with a uvular trill, but then switching from a velar/uvular fricative to a homorganic trill is hard, especially since my native German /r/ = [uvular fricative] gets in the way.)

Comments

[edricson.livejournal.com]

Cool!

The relevant spelling are "ubh", "feirm", "an fheirm"

[pne.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[conuly]

I can't watch that show. Every time they refer to something belonging to Boots, they say "Boots" instead of "Boots'", and it irritates me.

[pne.livejournal.com]

I thought the "bare apostrophe" form was only used for certain special cases such as "Jesus'" and "Moses'", but that names in general took apostrophe-s, as in "Chris's" and "Boots's"?

[conuly]

That's not how I was taught way back in the first grade, though I know most people use 's all the time now.

In the first grade, the rule I was taught was that if a name ends in an s, you just stick an aspostrophe there, no extra s. Every name. Period.

But you still say it, which they don't do. Gah.

[bluewingedcat.livejournal.com]

This is what I was also taught. And it irritates me as much.

[lnbw.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of disagreement over that, actually. The rule I use (and I'm pretty sure it's Strunk and White's, as well) is that you add "'s" to any word that doesn't end in a plural 's', even if it does otherwise end in an 's'. So: "Boots's" (but "boots'" when you're talking about something belonging to a pair of boots), "Jesus's," etc.

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

There's a new Dora-type show where the character is Chinese and speaks a few words in Mandarin each episode. Maggie is learning both Spanish and Mandarin at daycare, so it's interesting to me to observe that she is far more responsive to the new show (called "Ni-Hao, Kai Lan") than she ever was to Dora -- she actually repeats the words and seems to be having fun doing it. She also, to my untrained ear, seems to be more accurate at repeating the Mandarin sounds than many of the Spanish ones. (I'm always curious when Maggie is counting in Spanish how she came to "wat-woh" for four.)

[conuly]

Having seen both shows, I find that the newer one is a lot less condescending. They don't wait nearly as long for the kid to give an answer, nor do the jump around nagging for an answer.

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

That was my take on it, too, but I've only seen Dora a couple of times so I wondered if maybe my perception of it was off. Thanks for confirming that for me! :)

[conuly]

I understand that they ask easy questions so when they go "That's right!" the kid can actually be right. And I understand they wait a long time so that even the very slow kids have a chance to work it out. But it just comes off as annoying and insulting. My older niece, though, when we're sick, has great fun playing "the silly game". As in "Yes, you can use the rowboat to fix your shoe! Uh-huh!"

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

"Relatedly, I was a bit disappointed that in the German soundtrack, Dora talked about looking for "special ecks""

Why did you find that disappointing? I mean I'd expect you to be used to hearing such pronunciations in Germany.
I wonder how many German speakers even know that auslautverhärtung does not exist in English. No teacher ever pointed that out to me at school and they didn't correct us on that either. I guess a lot of people simply don't know (and they hardly have a chance to learn it by listening because of course their perception is biased due to their German mother tongue and because they hear the incorrect pronunciation so often.)
I have occasionally tried to correct friends of mine about the auslautverhärtung thing. Then they usually claimed that even though the voiced pronunciation might be the correct one, in rapid speech such a subtle difference could not possibly be noticed by anyone anyway.

"Others can say [θ], but it takes a bit of effort -- enough that they can't switch quickly from that unfamiliar phone to the [s] which is what they're trying to avoid saying, so you hear "month" (the [s] disappears)."

And there are even more difficult words like "sixths"... :P


"Hearing a German pronounce [θs] in such words means they've got an unusually good command of English phonology, I would say."

According to wikipedia each "th" phoneme has two realisations:

Both are pronounced either interdentally, with the blade of the tongue resting against the lower part of the back of the upper teeth and the tip protruding slightly (though less prominently than for the corresponding sound in Spanish) or alternatively with the tip of the tongue against the back of the upper teeth. The interdental position might also be described as "apico" or "lamino-dental". These two positions may be free variants, but for some speakers they are complementary allophones, the position behind the teeth being used when the dental fricative stands in proximity to an alveolar fricative, as in clothes (/ðz/) or myths (/θs/).

So, even the native speakers (or at least some) "cheat" a bit when saying /θs/ and don't use the interdental sound. ;) I used to only know of the interdental pronunciation and so probably made the pronunciation a lot more difficult than is necessary when saying /θs/.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Why did you find that disappointing?

Because I assume that the show is intended to teach children (a little bit of) English, and a teacher should be a good model of pronunciation IMO. If she were simply speaking English incidentally, it would be fine, but I don't think that's the purpose of the English one hears on the show.

I mean I'd expect you to be used to hearing such pronunciations in Germany.

Oh yes; quite.

I wonder how many German speakers even know that auslautverhärtung does not exist in English.

I also wonder how many German speakers (or how many native English speakers, for that matter!) know that final "voiced" sounds differ not only in voicing from their unvoiced counterparts, but that the vowel also influences what we hear as voiced.

For example, I pronounce "bed" and "bad" with a longer vowel than "bet" and "bat", respectively, and the longer pronunciation is, I believe, a fairly salient feature of what makes us her the final consonant as "d" rather than "t", possibly even more salient than the voicing or lack thereof (I believe word-final consonants aren't fully voiced in English, anyway).

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

"For example, I pronounce "bed" and "bad" with a longer vowel than "bet" and "bat", respectively, and the longer pronunciation is, I believe, a fairly salient feature of what makes us her the final consonant as "d" rather than "t", possibly even more salient than the voicing or lack thereof (I believe word-final consonants aren't fully voiced in English, anyway)."

I suppose most Germans don't know that, but I'm not sure. I knew it, but I'm more into language stuff than most people are. Anyway, I find it interesting that you think vowel length matters so much. Someone else had told me before that she thought that vowel length was very important for distinguishing voiced and unvoiced final consonants but I was a bit reluctant to believe her that it was so important because most dictionaries never point out that difference.

"Because I assume that the show is intended to teach children (a little bit of) English, and a teacher should be a good model of pronunciation IMO."

Oh, I didn't know the programme was supposed to teach children English. She must have been teaching Singaporean English then, which apparently (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlish#Consonants) does have auslautverhärtung. ;)

[conuly]

And there are even more difficult words like "sixths"... :P

God, I can't say sixths, and it's my own language!