Hello Caio and Vocalisters;
You wrote: > I've read and noticed it's a tendency of 'educated' speakers in the US. > Once I was watching an interview with an American scientist and she said > things like '...shIUn', for 'information', for instance, and it's very > frequent to hear 'OL', as in 'all' for ending "-ALs", instead of the > schwa, as in POTENTIAL.
> But you shouldn't forget that there is a tendency of all colonized > countries to keep older forms of the language, both in pronunciation and > grammar, and also spelling, and to have an independent evolution from the > same basis. Many things we say in Brazil are exactly the way the > Portuguese spoke in the 1500's, when our colonization started. When it > comes to the US, you hear things like 'gotten' and regular forms of verbs > ( burned, etc ) that are older forms of the language. The British dropped > 'gotten' and exchanged 'burnt' for 'burned' because their people had 'bad > English' ( which became standard because educated people were > 'contaminated' ). Americans didn't create that. The British corrupted the > language, and still do it much more than Americans ( not pronouncing the > ending Rs is another 'mistake' that became standard, as well as the > unpronounced ending vowels in French. Had the French been literate in the > past and they'd probably distinguish plurals when speaking ). > > Sociolinguists have long abandoned the belief of ONE standard LANGUAGE and > many dialects. Now they know it's many different dialects and a standard > one. If that's true within one society, why to expect ONE LANGUAGE from > different societies.
COMMENT: Thank you for such a clear and concise analysis of the roots of this discussion. The qualities of a language when installed in another culture or geographic entity does tend to remain more intact than in the original country. Another example is Quebec French which more closely resembles 17th century French than it does modern French, or so I am told.
Another aspect of English that I have noticed is a willingness to accept almost any pronunciation, especially from those to whom it is a second language. If I mispronounce a word while traveling in Europe, the natives are very quick to correct me. But English speaking people accept distortions of the language every day and seldom, if ever, correct the foreign speaker.
Right now an Austrian chef is on TV and is repeatedly pronouncing Vegetable as Wegetable. Yet, when we teach Freshman to sing German we insist that they make the distinction immediately between the pronunciation of the /v/ in German as different than in English and they are able to do this within a week of study, Make a mistake like that in Germany and they will immediately correct you but when German speaking people do it in English such a correction is seldom offered.
Your example of "shIUn', for 'information" is another example of the Italian pronunciation carried over into English with not a nod toward correcting this mistake.
Once, on a train in Italy, I told a very well educated native that I was going to Spoleto which I incorrectly pronounced as Spolehto (/E/ rather than the correct /e/). She did not even recognize the name of the city at first and when she did she was very quick to correct my pronunciation. I was grateful for her correction but more than a little surprised at her honest inability to recognize the city from my pronunciation. Yet we in the US hear unimaginable pronunciations of Chicago, for example, and always know what city the foreign speaker is attempting to pronounce and accept it as OK.
I mention this only as an interesting anomaly and not as a criticism of anyone who is speaking English as a second language. I wish I had another language that I could honestly call my second language.
Your use of English Ciao is quite wonderous. I envy your ability in another language and I am sure English is only one of many other languages that you speak.
Regards -- Lloyd W. Hanson, DMA Professor of Voice, Vocal Pedagogy School of Performing Arts Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, AZ 86011
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