I am noticing an increase in the hard glottal stop in the pronunciation of mitten and kitten, now more like mih'in and kih'in. Soft glottal stops are already common in fountain, button, apartment. (The purported increase in words like bottle or butter are actually voicings instead, turning them into "boddle" and "budder.") I don't know if this is national or regional. Here's the odd part. It seems much more common not only among young people, where one would expect change to be more prominent, but among young women. I may just notice it because my daughter-in-law is one, and the young woman I have worked most closely with the last five years is another.
Here's a fun article about Language Myths, BTW. I will no longer fight to remember to say "It is I." It's me is just fine.
11 comments:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21427896
Oh yeah. Greenberg is going to be vindicated again, but it will be denied for a generation, just like his African and Amerind groupings.
I just finished reading "Call the Midwife" the memoir upon which the short but excellent PBS/BBC series was based. The author includes a fairly extensive appendix regarding the cockney dialect, going into great detail regarding the phonemes and sounds peculiar to the dialect. This includes a long discussion of the glottal stop in cockney.
It seems the many such dialectic artifacts tend to flow (in modern america anyway) from young women. Note "valley girl" speech, and something called "vocal fry." Not sure why this is, but I have noticed it too. In at least some cases it seems like an affectation that wants to communicate a blase knowingness -- a kind of cool and sophistication. Only works within the tribe though, I think. But...our tribe is the social group that matters most to us I suppose its understandable.
Glo al stops. Learned what they are when in college.
Dave, I think it's involuntary, not affected. But there may be a strong ev psych rationale that young women are much more attuned to what other women are doing, even from childhood, and just naturally position themselves where their social chances are best.
Of note, both of the women I mentioned are smart, but neither is competitive about it. The more competitive would unconsciously seek the prestige dialect. Neither of these women would care about that.
Is there such a thing as an unconscious affectation?
In phonetic notation, the glo:all stop is denoted by a ":" - or so I learned in the aforementioned book.
If I understand correctly what a glottal stop sounds like, I have always pronounced mitten and kitten that way, along with just about everyone I know. To say "mitten" without the glottal stop, with a true hard "t," would sound very Masterpiece Theatre. But I say "boddle" for "bottle." "Bottle" with a glottal stop says "Baltimore" to me, just as "bottle" with a hard "t" would be Masterpiece Theatre.
What is this "vocal fry"?
And I would be unlikely to say "It is I," but I do say "This is she" (on the phone).
passionate primer on vocal fry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsE5mysfZsY
T99, I'm betting you have both a "t" and a glottal stop, as you would in "button," though at speed, the "t" might disappear even in mitten/kitten. This glottal is even harsher, as one might hear in Cockney speech "bo::le."
Or like this: http://youtu.be/yPZ5ytlh1LQ
You're right -- it's not the full cockney glottal stop, it's got a bit of hard "t" in it.
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