I was reading a newspaper ages ago with someone complaining about a news reporter being shocked about a news reporter pronouncing the Indonesian city "Bander Aceh" instead of without the 'r' -How on earth could a news reporter get the name wrong?!?
Well, it wasn't the news reporter's fault - she can't help it she's Australian. She was just doing what most other Australian-English speakers do everyday, and probably don't even realise.
Anyone who's tried to learn French will probably know about liasons - when the normally-silent final consonant of word is pronounced when it is followed by a vowel. So while les is pronounced more like "le" by itself, when it's immediately followed by a word like amis, then it will sound more like "les".
The same kind of thing happens in Australian English. Something obvious to American ears is that Australian English is an r-dropper; words like mother and father sound more like "motha" and "fatha". But the r isn't completely forgotten - want proof? If you're an Oz English speaker (or NZ English speaker, or possibly any other r-dropping English speaker) say "mother and father" ten times fast. If you listen closely, it'll sound more like "motha rand father". Isn't that amazing? It's one of those linguistic tricks I like to pull out at parties.
Anyway, so how does this relate to the Australian news reporter? Well, being an r-dropping English speaker, she's so used to pronouncing the r in between certain vowel sounds that she begins putting an r in between vowels when it sounds like there should to be an r, even if spelling-wise there shouldn't be one. The next thing you know, you're pronouncing Law and Order as "law rand order" and Banda Aceh as "Bander aceh". It's not a conscious decision to add the r, it just happens naturally, like how French speakers liase words without even thinking.
See? Another case of linguistics coming in to save the day.
...Maybe not saving lives or anything, but at the very least saving injustly-accused news reporters from seldom-read opinion letters...
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2 comments:
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