I have friends from Canada who say "aboot," "hoose" (for house). BUT it's a little softer and more rounded-sounding than the harshness of that "oo" sound. Trying to take a stab at type it more phonetically, it's more like a-buout. Dagnabit, that's not good either. Where's Henry Higgins when you need him? Or more accurately, George Bernard Shaw, who was very big on a phonetic alphabet.
In an attempt to pull this into teaching psychology: I'm covering language development in children, and showed a wonderful clip from The Brain series, that shows that a baby under 11 months of age can distinguish between all language sounds, but after that, becomes a "citizen of one culture" and can only distinguish sounds that he/she would hear in English. I always point out that if a child comes to a "new country" and learns a new language, they may not have an accent, even if their parents do not speak the new language in the home. Yet after a certain age, they're more likely to have an accent when speaking the new language. I have used Henry Kissinger and his younger brother as examples, though I'm not sure that many of them are familiar with his rich German accent anymore. So my question is, what IS the actual age period when this accent/no accent period takes place? I seem to recall it was around pre-puberty, but perhaps there are too many other variables that can affect whether a child will ultimately have a lifelong accent? Beth Benoit Granite State College Plymouth State University New Hampshire On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 11:50 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 3 Apr 2008 at 21:43, Shearon, Tim wrote: > > > Canadians do not say "Eh" (unless they are > > hard of hearing). Start with http://www.billcasselman.com/ Y'all come > > back now. Stephen or others may have better suggestions. :) > > Yes he does. And one of them is to assert, with pride, that Canadians do > indeed say "eh". Certainly I do, every day, and I'm not hard of > hearing. And bill casselman agrees, if you'd check your own reference. > He says, "Eh? is a true marker of Canadian speech". > > What we don't say is "aboot". > > Stephen > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. > Professor of Psychology, Emeritus > Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > 2600 College St. > Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 > Canada > > Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of > psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > > --- > To make changes to your subscription contact: > > Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) > --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
