Re: Great second cousin?

On Jul 5, 8:38 am, Roland Hutchinson <my.spamt...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dominic Bojarski wrote:
I have no problem at all voicing the closed "b".

I've been trying to do this. It comes out as [m].


It's a little simialar to an "M", but only a little. The mouth is much
tenser, and it is clearly a top rather than a durative consonant. The
closest thing I can compare it with is "gulping" with your lips
closed. When I say open "b", the voicing is produced long before the
lips open, and the sound is produced far back deep in the throat
(glottis), not only in the front of the mouth. After my lips open, the
voicing is produced in the fron of the mouth. I suspect that you
cannot produce the glottal voicing, and that's why you cannot produce
a voiced closed "b".

I have an essentially featureless General American accent. The only
thing that is unusual is that my weak vowels have practically entirely
merged with the "i" sound in the word "if". "Affect" and "effect" have
the "if" sound, as would "offect and "uffect", if they existed. All
three vowel sounds in the word "opinion" are qualitatively the same
for me. Otherwise, I've never been told that I pronounced this in any
way different than other General Americans.

I was born in northeast Pennsylvania, studied in San Diego and Europe,
and have worked in central Indiana and Chicago. The only devoicing I
have ever heard in the States was in Chicago, where some natives
devoice "s" at the end of a word. For example, "peers" sounds like
"pierce".

I'm sorry, but I dont have the equiptment to record it. As for your
question, I never devoice the "b", even when speaking quicky, and I do
not assimilate to nearby unvoiced sounds. I had to unlearn this when
learning Polish, a language in which voiced and unvoiced consonants
cannot be pronounced side by side without one of them being
assimilated.

The sentences "Take this cap to town" differs from "take this cab to
town" only insofar as the voicing on "b" is concerned. All vowel
lengths and qualities are identical. The same with the "b" in the word
"mobster". It doesn't sound the same as "mopster" to me. Again, vowel
durations are the same. The same with "black eye" and "black guy".

Unfortunately, I am living in Poland and have no other Americans to
compare my speach to. It's the start of the summer semester here, but
as soon as I can, I will check out some films and pay attention to the
pronunciation.

I'm have a pretty good ear for pronunciation, having learned three
foreign languages. I have studied and worked many years in Germany and
Poland, where the languages spoken have final devoicing, so I have no
problem recognizing this.Polish has uniform vowel duration, so when
teaching Poles, I have to teach them to vary the length of the vowels.
As I said, the only unusual thing (but still entiely normal) is my
accented vowels are uniformly long in duration. I do not shorten the
vowel in closed sylables ending with an unvoiced consonant as
(apparently) most Gerneral American speakers do.

I'm actually very surprised that you would consider my voicing of
terminal voiced consonats unusual, because I never noticed that I may
be speaking different, and have never had it brought to my attention
before.

I'm curious whether other posters voice the "b" in "cab".

Dominic Bojarski

.

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