a (fairly) new blog

This is to inform the interested public that Geoff Lindsey maintains a weblog which has been online since December 2011. It's called "speech talk", the subtitle is "thoughts on english, speech & language".
This blog contains some very interesting entries on English phonetics; I recommend this blog wholeheartedly!

The author holds a PhD from UCLA. He has repeatedly taught on SCEP (Summer Course in English Phonetics) held by UCL (University College London).More on him to be found here.

an INDEPENDENT squib

On the 7th of August 1994, Charles Neal Ascherson, journalist for the Independent on Sunday from 1990 to 1998, wrote in said newspaper:

According to Wikipedia Neal Ascherson was born in Edinburgh in 1932 and educated at Eton. He read history at King's College. Instead of becoming an historian, he pursued the career of a journalist.

Neal Ascherson

credit: www.lrb.co.uk

pepper

An aristocrat went to the village shop and asked for some "pepper". "Red or black pepper, sir?" asked the shopkeeper. "Don't be ridiculous," snapped the customer, "lav't'ry pepper."

I'm reading and enjoying Jilly Cooper's Class of 1979.

Jilly Cooper

credit:dailymail

another ejectivatress

On Friday, the 13th of February, and on Monday, the 6th of January, I wrote about ejectives. In the meantime I came across another Brit speaker who uses ejectives every now and then: Dr Lucy Worsley¹, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces. You can hear Lucy Worsley in various clips on youtube. I chose the video clip in which she introduces her book titled If Walls Could Talk. Listen closely to the word 'talk' as part of the clause "if walls could talk" at about 0:10 or to the word 'work' in the sentence "[b]ut imagine sharing your bedroom, even your bed, with other family members, with your work colleagues, even with strangers" at 1:47. Both k-sounds are produced as ejectives. Listen, please!

BTW: If you listen to her saying "present" (~0:32), "Britain" (~2:47) or "bring" (~3:40), you'll discover that she has slight problems with the r-sound after a bilabial plosive. It reminds me of Woy Jenkins.


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¹My thanks go to Graham Pointon for drawing my attention to Dr Worsley and her habit of replacing th's by labiodental fricatives.

ACTA

You will have heard or read about ACTA, the agreement to be brought about between several countries. Some nations have signed it, others have not yet ratified it. Some institutions cast doubt on this agreement because they fear that ACTA may infringe on people's rights to free speech.
It seems that only few people know what's behind this acronym: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
It also appears that a few news presenters do not check the pronunciation of counterfeiting with their pronunciation unit or dictionary. Here's an example of a section taken from yesterday's evening news of the Second German Television (= ZDF):

The word counterfeit (n., vb.) comes from Old French contrefaire with the past participle forms contrefet or contrefait. According to OED the word entered the English language in Middle English times. Thus, it has nothing to do with the English verb/noun fight, however attractive the thought may be as regards ACTA.

fresh from the printer

Fresh from the printer come these sentences concocted by a student of mine:

• "Two major theories are at present."
• "Firstly, physical factors, meaning manner and place of articulation, hinder speakers from fluent entrance in a language, since articulation of sound varies among languages".
• "Especially in school environments, it is easy to find out about students of mother tongue English because the rest of class usually has a strong German accent."

Aaargh!

The sentences have been excerpted from a student paper on foreign accents. These gems were ground by a 10th (repeat: tenth) semester student who wants to become an EFL teacher. Should he be unleashed upon pupils? Not by me - no, definitely not!

credit: teamcallo

an English drawbridge over the moat

credit: www.squidoo.com

Writing about Oxford Street and Oxford Road instigated my brain to think about the ever so many names the English language provides for road names. Let's see how many I can dig up within 5 minutes time:

alley, approach, arcade, avenue,
bank, boulevard, brow, buildings,
causeway, chase, circus, close, corner, cottages, court, crescent, croft,
drive,
embankment, end, esplanade,
fields
gardens, garth, gate, green, grove,
heights, hill,
lane, lawn, link,
mead, mews, mount,
parade, park, passage, pavement, place, promenade,
quay,
rise, road, row,
side, square, street,
terrace,
vale, view, villas,
walk, wall, way,
yard, ...

As said - there must be a lot more.

Next question: Why do the English need so many of them?

credit: www.basicfamouspeople.com

George Mikes (Hungarian-born, pronounced /ˈmɪkeʃ/) wrote in How to be an Alien: "You must understand that an English town is a vast conspiracy to mislead foreigners". It could well have been a Tschörman writing this because the latter likes and values 'order'. Tschörman houses hef house numbers, and neither ze street names nor ze house numbers are camouflaged as they are in England. A camouflage par excellence consists in giving a house an individual name such as Park Cottage, Midford Castle, Meadow View, Squirrels Leap, Cricket House, Evesham Manor,South Pavilion, Old Friars, Moushill Manor, etc. - but don't forget to check with the local authorities and the Royal Mail Address Maintenance Unit if you plan to individualise your house.

credit: BBC

Giving streets and houses fancy names and concealing house numbers is the modern substitute for moats and drawbridges, isn't it?

homing in on slashes

In a reply to my blog entry of the 19th of January Jack Windsor Lewis points to Bloch & Trager's Outline of Linguistic Analysis of 1942, where on page 47 they mention the term 'diagonals' (i.e. forward slashes), which they use to enclose phonemes. ɥere is the oriɡinal quotation from their book:

One year earlier, in 1941, Trager & Bloch published an article in Language (vol. 17, p. 229) with the title "The syllabic phonemes of English". Here's the screenshot of the footnote in which they use the term 'diagonals'

Can anyone come up with an antedating?

a lunch box on Times Square

A writer of pronunciation textbooks recently asked for help with a "simple rule" that explains the different stress patterns in Times 'Square or New 'York and 'lunch box or 'drugstore.

There is no simple rule, I'm afraid. Let's look at the General British English canonical pronunciation of some compounds combinations and concentrate on noun+noun compounds combinations first (stress patterns are based on checked against LPD3, if listed there; I do not indicate secondary stress).

'lunch box, 'lawn mower, 'book-case, 'lawn party, 'garden party, a'larm bell, 'smoke alarm, 'shoebox, 'coat hanger, 'mountain bike, 'Oxford Street, etc. There are a lot of noun compounds with primary stress on the first constituent. This looks promising, but alas ...

... despite 'Oxford Street it's Oxford 'Road, Oxford 'Circus, Oxford 'Court, Oxford 'Drive, Oxford 'Gardens, Oxford 'Lane, Oxford 'Avenue, x 'Mews, x 'Close, x 'Square, x 'Station, etc., and we can add other place names such as Epping 'Forest, Wandsworth 'Plain, Ladram 'Bay, Cumbria 'Fells, Derbyshire 'Dales, Maze 'Hill, Leckwith 'Moors, Buckingham 'Palace, Albert 'Hall, Westminster 'Abbey, Stone'henge, Hyde 'Park, St. Paul's Ca'thedral. Widening our geographical perspective we note Niagara 'Falls, North 'Sea, Atacama 'Desert, Eagle 'Plains, Yukon 'Territory, etc.

Needless to say noun-noun combinations are not restricted to geographical names. And it's here where it's getting really complicated!
olive 'oil or 'olive oil but 'olive branch yet olive 'drab,
peanut 'butter, butter 'icing but 'butter bean,
'milk tooth but milk 'shake, milk 'chocolate, milk 'pudding,
'coach station, 'coach driver, 
neighbourhood 'watch, but 'watchmaker, 'watchcase, 'watchdog,
'soap dispenser, 'soap opera, 'soapbox,
back'bencher but 'backbreaker, 'backbone,
government 'crisis,
crown 'colony, crown 'court, crown 'jewels,
pound 'note, pound 'sterling, but 'pound cake,
apple 'pie, apple 'green, apple 'sauce but 'applecart, 'apple blossom, 'apple tree,
head 'start, head 'waiter, head'quarter (or 'headquarter) but 'headroom, 'headset, 'headlight, 'headline.

On the 24th of December 2010 I wrote (the text is completely looney):
Before Christmas 'holidays start I do my Christmas 'shopping: I get some 'Christmas cards and buy some 'Christmas presents: On Christmas 'Eve I put them into Christmas 'stockings, so my beloved ones will find them on Christmas 'Day before we all have Christmas 'dinner, which includes some Christmas 'pudding. We might watch or listen to the Queen’s Christmas 'speech and sing some Christmas 'carols round the 'Christmas tree. Later we eat 'Christmas cake or might pull Christmas 'crackers. I no longer give out 'Christmas boxes. On the whole 'Christmas time means a lot of stress.


Have I whetted your appetite?

credit: www.mario-schaefer.com

More to come in a future blog entry. Bon appétit!



P.S.: See also Jack Windsor Lewis's remarks on stress irregularities.