From: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org (chakram-refugees-digest) To: chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Subject: chakram-refugees-digest V4 #266 Reply-To: chakram-refugees@smoe.org Sender: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk chakram-refugees-digest Friday, October 29 2004 Volume 04 : Number 266 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [chakram-refugees] LL in Less Than Perfect [IfeRae@aol.com] Re: [chakram-refugees] LL in Less Than Perfect [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] LL in Less Than Perfect ["Jackie M. Young" Indeed, the mixed-up accent had me wondering, too. Esp. as she usually has > excellent control. As a weak hypothesis-- perhaps she was trying for New > England and got it mixed up with British. Hmmm, I thought that was intentional -- maybe experimenting with a different accent or deciding to just "let if flow." It's like she didn't want to hide the Kiwi, but also sound like she'd been in the U.S. awhile. Actually, I've heard quite a few people from English-speaking countries who have that blend - -- with more or less depending on whether it's informal or business. As you say, Lucy's excellent at accents and apparently pretty aware of how she's speaking. - -- Ife ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 10:21:14 +1300 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] LL in Less Than Perfect On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 18:30, HJJH wrote: > Indeed, the mixed-up accent had me wondering, too. Esp. as she usually has > excellent control. As a weak hypothesis-- perhaps she was trying for New > England and got it mixed up with British. But, those Kiwi "short e's" > sounding like "short i's" were definitely there. > > As a linguist, I'm fascinated at how they can hear the difference between > their pronunciation of pairs words such as BIT:BET, MITT:MET, PIT:PET when > they sound the same to me. I've also occasionally noticed words with > "short a" sounding like "short e", as in BAD:BED and SAD:SAID. And these > sound changes seem to have almost entirely happened since 1965 when I > noticed rare hints of it. > > > TEXena Context probably has a lot to do with it. After all, we can distinguish between the dirfferent meanings of homonyms entirely by context. But also, it's very hard to hear the subtleties of a foreign language (or a foreign accent) until you get attuned to it. I think because we're accustomed to hearing just a small subset of all possible phonemes - the ones used by 'our' language - and so our brain just allocates 'foreign' phonemes into the nearest available 'slot'. This often makes trying to speak a foreign word just by listening to a native talking and trying to imitate it, rather futile. For example, there's a Rarotongan word 'teia' (meaning 'this') which sounds to me (when a Rarotongan says it) exactly like 'tare'. But if I say 'tare?' and point to something, they just look at me blankly, because what I said was nothing like their word. If I carefully say 'te - i - a' (having cheated by checking the spelling) and run the vowel sounds together, I get something that sounds to me more like 'tayer' and is, just, barely recognisable to them. But when they say it, it still sounds like 'tare' to me - there are some subtleties I just can't pick up. There's quite a good analogy (at least, I think it's a good analogy) in colours. That is, we all see the same colours ('colour-blind' people excepted) but we subdivide them very differently. For example, I believe Rarotongan has individual words for many different shades of yellow-green which we (other than in paint companies' colour cards) just lump together as, um, 'yellow-green'. On the other hand, very dark colours such as 'midnight blue', very dark green, and very dark brown are all lumped together by them as 'black'. Makes exact translations difficult :) cr ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 08:53:01 -1000 (HST) From: "Jackie M. Young" Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] LL in Less Than Perfect On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 00:30:45 -0500, HJJH wrote: > Indeed, the mixed-up accent had me wondering, too. Esp. as she usually has > excellent control. As a weak hypothesis-- perhaps she was trying for New > England and got it mixed up with British. But, those Kiwi "short e's" > sounding like "short i's" were definitely there. - --Unfortunately, she looked *extremely* out of practice in acting, and nothing seemed to come off convincingly for me. I know she can do better, so I don't know why she didn't?? My only guess is that she took it as a lark, and the producers invited her as a lark, and that's how it came off (sadly). It just looked like she was either trying too hard or not trying enough. ;/ Just MO, - --Jackie ****************************************************** * Proud to have the same birthday as Lucy Lawless! * * * * JACKIE YOUNG, JYOUNG@LAVA.NET * * * * * ****************************************************** ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ End of chakram-refugees-digest V4 #266 **************************************