2002-05-24 10:04
Preposterosities
Preposterosities
I'm also reading La Phonologie by J-L Duchet which is a lot of
fun. When I get stuck on a word I don't understand I look it up in
the dictionary, which is sensible enough, but I always seem to end up
looking at the pronunciation, carefully rehearsing the word, closing
the dictionary and going back to the book, and only then realising
that I still don't know what the word means.
Lather, rinse, repeat...
Swedish Sounds of the Day
Today's Swedish sounds are the two flavours of t:
the ordinary t, phonetic symbol [t],
and the retroflex t, phonetic symbol [t.] (which is all one
symbol).
Let's start with ordinary t. If you speak both French and
English then take a moment to compare the tongue position for the initial
t in
English telephone with that for French t�l�phone.
They're different, right? As
Bertil Malmberg (a Swedish phonetician writing in French) observes in
his book
La phon�tique:
Toute l'articulation fran�aise est charact�ris� par une tendence
ant�rieure. Les t, d, n sont des dentales pure.
[...]
L'anglais, au contraire, est charact�ris� par une tendence � reculer
dans la bouche. Les t, d, n sont alv�olaires.
(Yeah, OK, so that is a bit pretentious, but I picked the book up for
50p in the University Library's clearance sale on Wednesday, and at
least it shows I'm not making all this stuff up.)
The ridge right behind the front upper teeth is called the alveolar
ridge, and (as Bertil observes) the English t starts with the
tongue pressed against it. Not the very tip of the tongue, that is,
but the part just behind it.
That won't do for Swedish, though. For Swedish you want to snuggle
that part of the tongue right up to the front teeth. Go on, squish it
up there - if the tip protrudes just past the teeth that's fine. Now
pronounce t as usual except starting from that position.
Preferably a few times - it may take some getting used to if you're
new to it. That's a Swedish [t].
Now compare the sound with the standard English t - the
difference is clearly audible, right? To my ears the Swedish t
is crisper and cleaner and (hoorah!) substantially more
Swedish-sounding which is, after all, the point of the exercise.
The bad news is that I'm going to have to come back next time to
discuss [t.] - I think we both deserve a break by now, don't
you?
Vi ses!