Forum topic 7.1: Sounds in other languages
Think about sounds in languages that you know are not found in your own language. Put them in a posting, and make a comment about them.
A few years ago I spent time in Holland with my wife, visiting her Dutch family. Despite being an Australian citizen for more than 40 years, her father insists he is Dutch, to the extent that his family in Holland joke that he is 'more Dutch' than they are. Many of the sounds that are present in Dutch but not in English are a challenge to me, and we privately joke that these are phlegm sounds. Of interest to me, though, was that Dutch places importance on the duration of vowels - according to Dietrich, Swingley & Werker (2007) vowel length is "lexically contrastive" in Dutch, but not English.
During the period in which I learned some conversational Dutch (general greetings, introducing myself, etc) I had assumed that protracted - to my ears, at least - vowel length represented either familiarity with the listener, or playfulness (however that is measured for the reserved Dutch) and so would express vowels according to Australian English, my native language, so as to not appear overly familiar or, God forbid, playful. This would lead to blinks of surprise or disapproval, which were then carefully replaced with half-smiles for the pleb tourist. It is only now, years later, that I realise the significance and place of protracted vowel sounds, and will attempt to revise my speech patterns when next back that way.
Dietrich, C., Swingley, D., and Werker, J. (2007). Native language governs interpretation of salient speech sound differences at 18 months. PNAS 104(41), 16027-16031, doi:10.1073/pnas.0705270104
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