Re: American R training

On May 11, 4:30 pm, "Ricardo" <k...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Uzytkownik "Cece" <ceceliaarmstr...@xxxxxxxxx> napisal w wiadomoscinews:74ca252a-cc3d-4c81-8900-fbf0caa9bf63@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> I, of course, having grown up speaking Midwest America English
(standard American), have great trouble managing the Spanish flap and
trill ("pero" and "perro").

Sorry, for my nick being kind of misleading. I am Polish actually but I have
learned Spanish for long and I just love it (specifically Castellano, ie the
Castilian dialect being actually much different from the American
variations). So I perfectly understand what you mean here by the flap and
trill.

Even after years of singing along with> Rita Moreno and Marni Nixon in "West Side Story"!

Heh :) The trilled "R" is easy enough for me as we do have that kind of "R"
in Polish too though it is not that hardly pronounced as in the Spanish
"perro".

Yes, American English r does require that "gently rounded" lips.  For
years, I thought that was all there was to saying r, having no idea
that my tongue had anything to do with it.  There is some tension at
the corners of the mouth, and the upper lip lifts slightly in the
middle.

Wow, thank you for that beautiful description of how the American "R" is
pronounced! It should be copied and pasted in a kind of book on AmE
phonetics. Great work, really. Now, I know that my attempts to master the
American "R" have been going in the right direction. At this point I
probably need more exercising based on reading aloud some phrases with "R"s
located in different positions.

...
The tongue doesn't actually press on the teeth at the sides of the
mouth; it touches the insides of the teeth because that's how wide it
is.  Don't tense any of your tongue except the tip!

Oh, what a relief! Now it has become all clear to me. Thanks a lot for
helping me out to get rid of the doubts that were haunting me.

The standard Americanrhoticaccent has only one pronunciaton for r,
no matter where in the word it is (and that sentence has all five
possibilities).

Oh, another important clue you have given me! That's fantastic :)

Initial:rhotic.  Mid: American.  Terminal: for, r,
matter, where.  I don't know the terms for the other two; clustered
after a consonant: pronunciation, and clustered before a consonant:
standard, word.

You could seriously consider writing a phonology book for ESL students. No
kidding!

Which American Regional English are you listening to that you like the
melody?

Well, the Midwestern I believe is the most immaculate of all the dialects
and the closest to so called General American. And that's what I am trying
to copy. However, I like to listen to some other AmE dialects and try to
immitate them just for fun. As you can see I am a kind of phonetics freak :)
Thanks again for your invaluable consultation! I appreciate it a lot.
Regards,
--
Ricardo

Yes, Midwestern minus the twang is Standard American. It's what I
began speaking 60 years ago, modified (and slowed!) by Urban East
Texas over the last few decades. The Midwestern twang has the "short
a" (/&/) leaning farther toward a "short e" (/E/) than it should
("laugh" sounds like "leff"). Another bit of Midwestern accent leads
folks from elsewhere to hear an "r" in "wash" ("warsh") -- which isn't
there; the tongue is not involved. The Midwesterner uses a slightly
different vowel and the lips go through that "gently rounded" with
tense corners as the mouth moves from the vowel to the /S/ end
consonant.

I don't know enough to write a book! Being curious, I have been
reading what I can find in the public library on phonetics and
linguistics, but I have not done a real course of study.

If you are using movies to hear other Amerian accents, you won't learn
much. Although the U.S. has about 30 accents, Hollywood has decreed
that only three accents may be used by actors portraying Americans:
standard, urban, and Southern. Unfortunately, Hollywood does not know
accents at all! What they think is Southern is actually from the
Ozark Mountains; it's Arkansas hillbilly. Several years ago, there
was a short-lived TV show set in Houston, featuring two policemen, one
a native of Houston and the other recently moved in from Chicago. The
actor who played the native Houstonian could do a very good west Texas
accent (Texas has five regional accents), but on the screen he sounded
straight out of the Ozarks. The character from big-city Chicago
sounded like he came from Brooklyn (part of New York City, about 800
miles, or 1230 km, farther east). Once in a while, actors can sneak a
bit of regional truth into their parts, usually a bit of vocabulary
peculiar to the area (Maine: "ayuh"; The Bronx: "youse"). But not
often.
.

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