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!