I'm a Amy!

[pne]

Amy doesn't use "a" or "an" depending on the following word; instead, she uses "a" all the time, even if the next word starts with a vowel sound.

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In other news, she's started using "one" in German in some cases where it would be used in English, for example, "Ich möchte die eine mit der Ente" = I want the one with the duck (normally just "Ich möchte die mit der Ente"). Mostly, this seems to be where the article or demonstrative is used; she doesn't seem to use it after adjectives (e.g. "I want the blue one" but "Ich möchte den blauen"; I don't think I've heard *"Ich möchte den blauen einen" from her).

Comments

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

"Ich möchte die eine mit der Ente"

Maybe it's English influence but it doesn't really sound wrong to me in colloquial speech. I think it sounds something like "ich möchte die eine, you know the one with duck".

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

"with the duck"

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

"I don't think I've heard *"Ich möchte den blauen einen" from her"

And what about the more German "Ich möchte den einen blauen"?

[tungol.livejournal.com]

Does she put glottal stops before all her word-initial vowels?

(I have heard of some English dialects where it is starting to happen that all vowel-initial words start with glottal stops, and apparently the glottal stop counts as a consonant and so "a" has become universal and "an" has been eliminated. I wonder if Amy is reinventing the same thing, perhaps under influence from German - doesn't German put glottal stops before word-initial vowels?)

[pne.livejournal.com]

Does she put glottal stops before all her word-initial vowels?

Hmm... I've never paid much attention to it. It's possible.

doesn't German put glottal stops before word-initial vowels?

So I've read.

This also means that I have a hard time discerning word-initial glottal stops, because I'm so used to them from my native German that I usually just hear the vowel, not the preceding glottal stop. (Since the glottal stop is probably not phonemic -- sort of like most English people will not hear aspiration differences in voiceless stops since the distinction is not phonemic.)