More "divided by a common language" stuff

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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by Nanohedron »

Mr.Gumby wrote: Sat Sep 10, 2022 2:21 pm
It's not an H per se, but more akin to a CH as in "loch", but even that isn't right. It's further back to the throat. In desperation I would try to transcribe it as "qhauda" (that there's a Q in case you missed it), and the initial consonant is by no means shy or reticent.
You're closer but I don't think "qhauda" quite does it. Few speakers of English can get the pronunciation of the Dutch 'g' and 'ou' quite right.

There's, almost inevitably, a YouTube video but that doesn't quite get it quite right 'ghh'. That 'h' creeping in there is the give away of the non native speaker.
Yeah, your YouTube example there isn't right; he's missing the the very uvular sound the proper Dutch G should have. Not to preen, but I can pronounce it quite well; I like to think my aforementioned passing Dutch acquaintance's astonished reaction had nothing to do with any acting ability on his part.

And it's really not that hard to do; any English speaker knows how to do it already, only we usually just reserve it for clearing out little stuck bits from the back of the throat. In fact, there's a dirty joke in English that involves this sound. :)

All I can say is that the Dutch must have sore throats. :wink:
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by GreenWood »

Tios, se lo pronuncia Si como silbato, Lan como lana, y Tro como tropeza.

¡Es fácil!
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

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GreenWood wrote: Sat Sep 10, 2022 7:25 pm Tios, se lo pronuncia Si como silbato, Lan como lana, y Tro como tropeza.
That's what I would have thought. Anglophone Americans just squash it some.
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With a little help from Google Translate...
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by benhall.1 »

Nanohedron wrote: Sat Sep 10, 2022 7:37 pm
GreenWood wrote: Sat Sep 10, 2022 7:25 pm Tios, se lo pronuncia Si como silbato, Lan como lana, y Tro como tropeza.
That's what I would have thought. Anglophone Americans just squash it some.
GreenWood wrote:¡Es fácil!
With a little help from Google Translate...
Yes ... though quite how "lan" can be made to sound like "wool" is beyond me.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by GreenWood »

In English there just isn't that deep "O" sound by itself, going on "roar" but without a "w" or "r" sound to it. American English though tends to draw out the vowels even more than the English. Northern England accent is very hard on the vowels, for "fast" it is changed from "farst" to "fast" like "pat".

I think I have heard "lane" used for wool in English at some point Ben, but in the US/Canada it is known in English also via "Pure Laine", and is in

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/laine

for English. Lana pronunciation though is spanish, possibly worked into

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/lanyard

What is funny though is that according to

https://www.etymonline.com/word/wool

both wool and lana share the same root....so I guess the idea was more to make them sound different if anything...or if you want them to sound the same you would have to go back several thousand years in time.


I don't think a common language divides though. If you look at India, also with its colonial past, Indians in general don't mind speaking English without any particular contention existing. I think the differences with US that get emphasised with language are more based on some kind of political/historical/social argument that has played out over the last several hundred years. In other words, if common language does divide it is because the other knows all too well what is being said, and that not being the fault of (or because of changes to) a common language itself.

Obviously, America won't accept being corrected by the English, but should the US end up with Spanish as main language even that would not be the theme it is now either.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

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GreenWood wrote: Sun Sep 11, 2022 9:08 am I don't think a common language divides though. If you look at India, also with its colonial past, Indians in general don't mind speaking English without any particular contention existing. I think the differences with US that get emphasised with language are more based on some kind of political/historical/social argument that has played out over the last several hundred years. In other words, if common language does divide it is because the other knows all too well what is being said, and that not being the fault of (or because of changes to) a common language itself.
I have a rather different understanding of "divided by a common language", and it's strictly linguistic, and nothing more. When Shaw coined the phrase, my take was that he was referring to how colloquial language develops regional peculiarities, such that in time they form full-blown idiolects, and while the language is nominally the "same", how is it they can't understand each other much of the time? Shaw's bon mot on North American and British English demonstrates a larger truth simply in a closer focus, although I can't assume that this finer point was necessarily his main intention.

Last night on the news a Londoner of some kind was being interviewed on the topic of the succession of the Crown, and heaven help me but I couldn't understand a thing that came out of his mouth. Usually I don't have that problem, but this time I was stumped.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by david_h »

For me the phrase stands alone as a witty construct without knowing who is being referred to, and I wonder if that was the main intention. Beyond that I assumed it was a reference to linguistic divergence and inadvertent misunderstanding - and as such was a good title for this thread.
Nanohedron wrote: Sun Sep 11, 2022 1:54 pmUsually I don't have that problem, but this time I was stumped.
So do you understand all your countrymen's ways of speaking? I'm not sure we all do.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

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david_h wrote: Sun Sep 11, 2022 2:40 pm
Nanohedron wrote: Sun Sep 11, 2022 1:54 pmUsually I don't have that problem, but this time I was stumped.
So do you understand all your countrymen's ways of speaking? I'm not sure we all do.
Sometimes I'll have initial difficulties, but typically I'm able to resolve them in short order. I'm under the impression that British English has far more in the way of regional, even local idiosyncratic speech than one finds in the States. Don't get me wrong: The US has plenty in the way of regionally unique speech, but they're usually not opaque to me. This also tends to apply with me to foreign accents, and usually I can understand most of the Brits I encounter, although idioms may escape me. But if I'm confronted with something like heavy Glaswegian or a full-bore Jamaican patois, I'd have to live locally for a while to get a handle on such as those. It seems to me that it takes a high level of comfort with, or at least continual bombardment by, English for an idiolect to form, even to the point of it morphing into something incomprehensible to most others. Yet, it would still be counted - in some circles - as English.

I think it's the detectable commonalities that I latch onto. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by GreenWood »

Definitely witty as david_h says, because it can be read in so many ways. Also around the same time Oscar Wilde is sometimes attributed the quote for writing

"In The Canterville Ghost (1887)
‘We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language’ "

Which adds a slightly different twist to the expression. For example it might imply more easily that not having a common language is the dividing point, i.e. not that having a common language is what causes division. Shaws phrase read wittily might mean the same thing of course.

But you know, if you have a dig and for sure it will stir up the rest, so whether either was being impartially reflective is a harder question...I like to think it was more fruit of a perplexed contemplation.

That I read what I do into the phrase is obviously only one interpretation.

The most difficult learning of a languages that I have found so far is where it is similar to one you already know. Portuguese is like that for me, because it is so close and so far from Spanish, which I speak fluently. The trouble is that when I (try to) speak Portuguese, I just feel like I'm getting my Spanish all wrong, sort of like degrading it. Portuguese though is I think closer to older Spanish, and was (and still is) highly regarded artistically and so on, so it isn't that there is anything wrong with Portuguese at all. It took several months to decipher the change of pronunciation , say on radio, and the actual words and grammar are so close to Spanish that it is fully intelligible then, but then a local will start talking away to me and I won't understand a word. In Spain there is "Andalu" and that is difficult enough already. When we first arrived in Portugal I got talking to a waitress, or tried, and she understood that all well enough, called how I was speaking "Portunol". Mind you, Portugal and Spain don't much pretend to see eye to eye either, Spain being largely distrusted by Portugal, and the US as well (for good enough reasons).

English accents can be very different. I once went to a local farmers livestock auction in north of England, and I could barely understand what anyone was saying at all, let alone the auctioneer. You wouldn't know these communities existed unless you were introduced (a great uncle was dairy farmer until quotas), because farmers don't tend to spend their time socialising for example except with family and close friends.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

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Nanohedron wrote: Sun Sep 11, 2022 3:16 pmI'm under the impression that British English has far more in the way of regional, even local idiosyncratic speech than one finds in the States.
That may be the case but the national and local media is everywhere close to a standard English, such as is written, with no very strong accents. Most people can, with varying success, switch to something close to that. There are places where I have no trouble when people talk to me (after I have spoken) but I find it difficult and on a few occasions impossible when they talk amongst themselves. It could be your 'Londoner of some kind' with a microphone put in front of them went far enough for us but not for you. If it was one of the few people who remain incomprehensible I guess they wouldn't have used the piece.

I wonder if you folks over there are more used to being able to understand one another without adaptations. Maybe us not making allowances for each other is what Shaw suggested divided us.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

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david_h wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 3:05 amIt could be your 'Londoner of some kind' with a microphone put in front of them went far enough for us but not for you. If it was one of the few people who remain incomprehensible I guess they wouldn't have used the piece.
Yeah, it's hard to say from my end, of course. I don't recall whether the interviewing crew was American or British - both were to be found, naturally - and of course that's going to make for wholly different contexts as to why the fellow was put on the air, and he made free to speak at some length. IIRC it was live at the time, though, and I almost invariably watch CBS for my news, but on occasion I'll watch the Beeb, so who knows. But his speech was amazingly rapid-fire, that much I can tell you, and after shaking my noggin and blinking my eyes, I thought, That could have been Ainu for all I can tell. What was unquestionably clear was his enthusiasm.

It's an oft-repeated truism that Northern Yank speech is faster than that of the South. I can assure you that there are exceptions to that, since this Northerner never adopted the "time is money" mentality; I prefer to speak as if I'm lounging. Barring emergencies, of course. But my landlord? Holy moley. He fits the stereotype to a T and then some.
david_h wrote:I wonder if you folks over there are more used to being able to understand one another without adaptations.
I might be going out on a limb with this one, but I'd say that's mostly right. Seldom - maybe only a handful of times - have I ever had the need for other Yanks to repeat themselves due to regional differences.
david_h wrote:Maybe us not making allowances for each other is what Shaw suggested divided us.
I would say that's part of the picture. :)
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by GreenWood »

However David, that is the problem, who is supposed to make allowance for who ?

Though I might think it is perfectly obvious that standard English is the clearest and most uncomplicated way of speaking, and you are right that in England people do know how to switch to that, in the US they might think differently. The US does not even have English as official language at federal level, for example, and General American is spoken nowhere

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/n ... can-accent


That is not even to mention the sense of rivalry that sometimes exists between nations, or the wish to purposefully differentiate oneself from another nation.

We just have to face it, we're quaint.


Vice versa, I am not going to start drawling just to be understood. A friend once moved to Oz, and within months she sounded completely authentic... but then the Australian accent is much closer to English, it is distinct but doesn't try to be and is earthy enough...I was very surprised though. However she had moved there for good and had every reason to assimilate the way of speaking.

Anyway, I suppose the US has Alexa and that might one day set a standard. If you consider that the US is several times the population of UK and that they all seem to understand each other, it does make it look like the British are the outsiders ... unless of course they aren't really speaking English in the US after all.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by Nanohedron »

GreenWood wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 1:54 pm... unless of course they aren't really speaking English in the US after all.
I have, on occasion, called it Yanklish. :wink:
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

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GreenWood wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 1:54 pm However David, that is the problem, who is supposed to make allowance for who ?
I said 'allowances for each other'. In the previous sentence I used 'adaptations' but that's too unidirectional. I think one also has to be aware that something may not mean what first comes to mind on hearing it.

Some local idiosyncrasies of English in the UK go back centuries and those who cherish them are wont to bemoan a tendency to homogenise due to travel and the media. Did the USA develop it's version of English by mainly by homogenisation right from the start?

I am not going to drawl to be understood but I might speak at a more relaxed pace and be more careful with my diction.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by MikeS »

[/quote]So do you understand all your countrymen's ways of speaking? I'm not sure we all do.[/quote]

The short answer is not always. The question I end up asking myself sometimes is when does what I am hearing stop being English? I have friends who were born in Nigeria who speak a patois that includes Ibo words and English words whose pronunciation has morphed a great deal. They will certainly tell you they are speaking English. I frequently encounter people who speak Yeshivish, which is English with a large doses of Hebrew words and Talmudic phrases in Aramaic. Here is a sample:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtZ6DX3kvYU

I can understand about 80% of that one (and some of the parts I understand are pretty funny).

I think the term for these is sociolect. What percentage of folk in the UK can understand 100% of a conversation Cockney rhyming slang?

To change the topic a bit, one of the things, as a Yank, that has long amused me is when the BBC decides that some poor soul can’t even pronounce their own name correctly. I remember when all the BBC presenters were uniform in referring to the then U.S. President as BARE-ack Obama. There is a tape of an interview the BBC did many years ago with Gustav Holst. Apparently his heavy Gloucestershire accent was deemed outside of acceptable standards. They transcribed the initial interview and then spent three days with Holst, coaching him on how to speak his own words “properly.” The result was weird and totally lifeless, but the ears of Britain were spared from hearing “pirate talk.”
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