Uvular r in Hungarian

[Ruud Harmsen]

Tim Lang mentioned (can't find where) that some speakers of Hungarian
use a uvular r. I had never heard that. Today I have: one Zsikó
Zoltán, of the bank Zsikó Zenekar, talks like that, here:
https://youtu.be/4cCHztV4Imo?t=437
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

[Ruud Harmsen]

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 15:21:35 +0200: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>
scribeva:

>Tim Lang mentioned (can't find where) that some speakers of Hungarian
>use a uvular r. I had never heard that. Today I have: one Zsikó
>Zoltán, of the bank Zsikó Zenekar, talks like that, here:
>https://youtu.be/4cCHztV4Imo?t=437

Anque quando ille canta:
https://youtu.be/4cCHztV4Imo?t=1123
Sorry, wrong language, also when he sings.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 15:34:39 +0200: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>

scribeva:

>Thu, 20 Oct 2022 15:21:35 +0200: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>
>scribeva:
>
>>Tim Lang mentioned (can't find where) that some speakers of Hungarian
>>use a uvular r. I had never heard that. Today I have: one Zsikó
>>Zoltán, of the bank Zsikó Zenekar, talks like that, here:
>>https://youtu.be/4cCHztV4Imo?t=437
>
>Anque quando ille canta:
>https://youtu.be/4cCHztV4Imo?t=1123
>Sorry, wrong language, also when he sings.

His sister (I found she is, they are "testvérek"), who also sings and
talks a lot in this long video, does not have this trait. So
apparently this is personal rather than regional.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Possibly gender-linked? You'd need to find a region with the uvular
one and compare men, women, and other.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 08:05:18 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:

Could be. I found their being siblings in this page:
https://www.teol.hu/helyi-kultura/2022/09/virtuoz-muveszettel-oregbitik-hirunket-hataron-innen-es-tul
which says:
"Az alsónyéki testvérpár ma már határainkon innen és túl egyaránt
ismert és kedvelt."
which Google Translate render into English as:
"The pair of brothers from Alsónyék are now known and loved both here
and beyond our borders."

("Pair of brothers" is nonsense of course, siblings, brother and
sister. But Hungarian has no gender distinction, that is why.)

I don't know what or where Alsónyék is, Tim would know. And
Wikipedia:
https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Als%C3%B3ny%C3%A9k

[Christian Weisgerber]

On 2022-10-20, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:

> "Az alsónyéki testvérpár ma már határainkon innen és túl egyaránt
> ismert és kedvelt."
> which Google Translate render into English as:
> "The pair of brothers from Alsónyék are now known and loved both here
> and beyond our borders."
>
> ("Pair of brothers" is nonsense of course, siblings, brother and
> sister. But Hungarian has no gender distinction, that is why.)

That doesn't follow. A quick look at Wiktionary confirms that
Hungarian very much has different words for "brother" and "sister";
in fact it's one of those languages that differentiates "older
brother", "younger brother", "older sister", "younger sister". The
"testvér" from above is a generic sibling, though.

Meanwhile, Spanish is very much gendered, but uses the male plurals
"hermanos" and "padres" for generic 'siblings' and 'parents', too.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de

[Ruud Harmsen]

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 22:33:28 -0000 (UTC): Christian Weisgerber
<na...@mips.inka.de> scribeva:

>On 2022-10-20, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
>
>> "Az alsónyéki testvérpár ma már határainkon innen és túl egyaránt
>> ismert és kedvelt."
>> which Google Translate render into English as:
>> "The pair of brothers from Alsónyék are now known and loved both here
>> and beyond our borders."
>>
>> ("Pair of brothers" is nonsense of course, siblings, brother and
>> sister. But Hungarian has no gender distinction, that is why.)
>
>That doesn't follow. A quick look at Wiktionary confirms that
>Hungarian very much has different words for "brother" and "sister";

Yes, I too sometimes with lány- (girl) prefixed. Girl brother =
sister.

>in fact it's one of those languages that differentiates "older
>brother", "younger brother", "older sister", "younger sister". The
>"testvér" from above is a generic sibling, though.

Yes, from body-blood, from the expression:
egy test és vér = of one body and blood
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/testvé
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lánytestvér#Hungarian

>Meanwhile, Spanish is very much gendered, but uses the male plurals
>"hermanos" and "padres" for generic 'siblings' and 'parents', too.

Yes. And Google Translate has notorious difficulty when translating
from Portuguese (and most likely Spanish and Italian too) in keeping
guys and gals apart, because even though the he-she words exist, they
are often left out (null subject languages).

[Ruud Harmsen]

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 08:53:38 +0200: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>
scribeva:

As a separate word, GT does translate testvérpár as brother and
sister. Context is everything. I dumped the whole of that Hungarian
article into GT, and I suspect that the lack of seperate he-she words
in Hungarian (in addition to being pro-drop / null-subject) confused
GT.

[Tim Lang]

On 21.10.2022 00:33, Christian Weisgerber wrote:

>>("Pair of brothers" is nonsense of course, siblings, brother and
>>sister. But Hungarian has no gender distinction, that is why.)
>
>That doesn't follow. A quick look at Wiktionary confirms that
>Hungarian very much has different words for "brother" and "sister";
>in fact it's one of those languages that differentiates "older
>brother", "younger brother", "older sister", "younger sister". The
>"testvér" from above is a generic sibling, though.

That's right.

In addition, Hungarians by and large use further words for
the siblings (testvér/ek):

• húg [hu:g] "younger/little sister" a húgom "my sister"
• nővér ['nøveːr] "elder sister" a nővérem ['nøveːræm]
"my elder sister"
• öcs [øtʃ] "younger/little bro'" az öccsém "my
• báty [bɑːc̟] "elder bro'" a bátyám ['bɑːc̟ɑːm]
"my elder bro'"
(with the devoiced palatal or alveo-palatal plosive -ty-)
(this one: etymological link both to bácsi "elder one" and to
the Slavic equivalents based on bat-, having similar meanings:
"elder; senior")

To Hungarians, testvér is quite ... vague. Therefore, they
always use the precise synonyms above whenever referring
to brothers and sisters and whenever knowing who's the younger
and who's the elder one.

(deriv.)
• öcsi ['øtʃɪ] "the youngest among siblings;" any "youngster, li'l one;"
"junior". Öcsi is also used by whole lotta people as a familiar
first name among relatives and friends instead of the real first
name. Usually whenever such an Öcsi is the youngest among siblings.

• öcskös ['øtʃköʃ] = an 'öcsi', 'dude', 'buddy', but quite
derogatory/pejorative, quite offensive/insulting; usually
by a bully. Usually used by a large, strong person, addressing
a young and small/petite one.

✿

BTW: Uvular ʁ is rare and always personal. All other Hungarians
pronounce as apical and rolled r's as e.g. Italians, Spaniards,
Slavs. AFAIK, there is no regiolect with an ʁ tendency in Hungary
and in Hungary's lost territories in Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia,
Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Rumania.

This despite neighboring ... Austria, where the uvulation "starts"
within the German-speaking world (and gets "extreme" in Saxony, East
Germany, as well as in the province of Baden-Württemberg in South-
Western Germany. Moreover, none of the German-speaking isles in Hungary,
former Yugoslavia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Rumania and former USSR
pronounce the uvular ʁ in their German dialects, this kind of r being
one of the big differences from what's customary in the "reich" (except
for some regions of Bavaria, Suebia and some northernmost small areas of
Germany).

Hungarians call the pronunciation of the uvular ʁ as ... ráccsolás;
derivation of the verb ráccsol(ni). (The spelling -ccs- for the čč i.e.
tʃtʃ gemination.)

<https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccsolás>

__here cf. the example "Uvuláris r nyelvcsapi pergéssel", referring to
one among various flaws/mistakes/deviations (!) in pronouncing the r in
Hungarian. (This shows that the uvular ʁ is not quie "welcomed" in
this language.)

Upon touching the button "English", the art. in Hungarian gives a
link to this en.wiki-page referring inter alia to "Articulation
disorders":

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_sound_disorder#Rhotacism>

Tim

[Christian Weisgerber]

On 2022-10-21, Tim Lang <m...@privacy.net> wrote:

> In addition, Hungarians by and large use further words for
> the siblings (testvér/ek):
>
> • húg [hu:g] "younger/little sister" a húgom "my sister"
> • nővér ['nøveːr] "elder sister" a nővérem ['nøveːræm]
> "my elder sister"
> • öcs [øtʃ] "younger/little bro'" az öccsém "my
> • báty [bɑːc̟] "elder bro'" a bátyám ['bɑːc̟ɑːm]
> "my elder bro'"

What about "fivér", which is also offered by Wiktionary for "brother"?

> This despite neighboring ... Austria, where the uvulation "starts"
> within the German-speaking world (and gets "extreme" in Saxony, East

Austro-Bavarian has an apical trill r, although I suppose the uvular
pronunciation is spreading outside of dialect use since it is
nowadays perceived as the standard pronunciation.

For a while, the apical trill was known as "Carolin-Reiber-R" in
Germany, after a TV presenter from Bavaria who conspicuously used
that pronunciation.

Uvular r in Western Europe is essentially an areal phenomenon that
spread from Paris and now cuts across two language boundaries
(French/West Germanic, West/North Germanic). See this map:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttural_R#/media/File:Uvular_rhotics_in_Europe.png

[Helmut Richter]

On Fri, 21 Oct 2022, Christian Weisgerber wrote:

> Austro-Bavarian has an apical trill r, although I suppose the uvular
> pronunciation is spreading outside of dialect use since it is nowadays
> perceived as the standard pronunciation.

This remark applies only to r before the nucleus of a syllable, not after
it. Outside NE Bavaria, the post-vocalic r is vocalised to become [ɐ] forming
a diphthong with the preceding vowel. This vocalisation happens in many
German regions, not only in Bavaria.

There is a funny story about a kindergarden in Bavaria where the kids were
told to sort coloured toy blocks by their colour and by their form, but the
two words turned out to be undistinguishable: [fɔɐm] is the normal Bavarian
pronunciation of both "Form" and "Farbe" (colour). For "Form", this is
immediate, for "Farbe", it comes from an appended -n to prevent the final -e
(typical Bavarian), and then -bn assimilated to become -bm, and -bm condensed
to become -m (the latter two steps happen also in German regions far from
Bavaria, e.g. "haben" becoming "ham" in colloquial language).

BTW, the same diphthong [ɔɐ] is also the regular pronunciation of
standard-German "ei" in those cases where it was already "ei" in Middle High
German: oans (eins), zwoa (zwei), i woaß (ich weiß) but not drei (drei),
weiße Foam (weiße Farbe).

> For a while, the apical trill was known as "Carolin-Reiber-R" in
> Germany, after a TV presenter from Bavaria who conspicuously used
> that pronunciation.

Yes, I know that word, and to me it tells that the apical r of C.R. was
regarded as something special¹ – certainly Bavarian but by no means
consistently spoken everywhere in Altbayern (the Bavarian-speaking part of
Bavaria). This is certainly at least in parts an effect of the uvular r being
standard in most of Germany but I do not think this frequent use of uvular
prevocalic r has *exclusively* this cause.

¹) Wikipedia says: "Bekannt wurde sie nicht zuletzt wegen ihres akzentuierten
bairisch rollenden Zungenspitzen-R." They would not say so if all TV
presenters from Bavaria would use apical r.

--
Helmut Richter

[Tim Lang]

On 21.10.2022 22:10, Christian Weisgerber wrote:

>What about "fivér", which is also offered by Wiktionary for "brother"?

Yes. A bit more like "Gebrüder" in German; e.g. a Grimm fivérek
(but also a Grimm testvérek); cf. fi "son" and fiu "boy"; as for
female siblings: a Brontë nővérek (but also a Brontë testvérek).
The same way a Kennedy fivérek/testvérek; a Kelly fivérek/testvérek;
a Gábor nővérek/testvérek (including Zsa Zsa Gábor); a Kessler
nővérek/testvérek (ie, the German twin sisters).

>Austro-Bavarian has an apical trill r,

That's right: the trilled r is typical of Bavarian incl. the Austrian
and Franconian variants; as well a big "chunk" of Suebia, esp. the
easternmost regions of it, whereas e.g. Stuttgart already means
one of the uvular-r "epitomes" among the German dialects (ie, the
same dialect with two different r's).

>although I suppose the uvular pronunciation is spreading outside
>of dialect use since it is nowadays perceived as the standard pronunciation.

It also has been uvularized in Bavaria, Franconia and Austria for
many generations now. Of course never as "intense" as in western
and northern regions of Germany. BTW, the map is not as accurate
as it should be, since e.g. in Saxony the uvular r is so "extreme"
that it influences the vocalic environment in a bad way. (In
the BadenWürttemberg Suebia regions, too.) So much so, that whoever
from those areas wants to become an actor or a radio or TV employees
must get extreme logopedic training, despite the fact that, by and
large, theater, radio, TV Hochdeutsch pronunciation has the uvular
r too, yet withouth the "bad" influences which are typical especially
of those two dialects.

>For a while, the apical trill was known as "Carolin-Reiber-R" in
>Germany, after a TV presenter from Bavaria who conspicuously used
>that pronunciation.

That's right. Carolin Reiber has a genuine Bavarian pronunciation
in her standard/Hochdeutsch German. By the way, in the "sea" of
uvular r Germany (as shown on the map), there are exceptions too
now and then. Among the VIPs the politician Georg "Schorsch" Leber
who had several positions in the federal gov't in the 70s-80s;
from the state of Hesse. And the retired social-democrat Franz
Müntefering, another well-known politician, from the province
of Sauerland in North-Rhine Westfalia. Both with "Southern" trilled
r's, "exotic" sounds in those provinces where only immigrants from
the Romance and Slavic worlds and Germans from east-european
"enclaves" utter such trilled apical r's. (I remember that Leber's
r's often had the quality of ... English and Dutch r's, too.)

>Uvular r in Western Europe is essentially an areal phenomenon that
>spread from Paris and now cuts across two language boundaries
>(French/West Germanic, West/North Germanic).

So this is a French "invention" then? If so, how is then possible
that some people have this uvular r as their native r in languages
where such a "French" r is unusual (or is perceived as a mistake/flaw,
as the Hungarian wikipedia describes it)? I've heard some Slavs
(incl. Russians), Hungarians, Italians, even more Rumanians, having such
natural uvular r's. Especially people who neither speak French,
nor Hebrew nor Arabic. (I don't remember whether I happened to
hear uvular r's pronounced by Greek or Turks.)

(An interesting r, that sounds as if it'd be an uvular one is the
"interdental r". I had two colleagues who were able to utter such
an r in a natural way, and it sounded like an uvular r, but you
could see how they used their apex between their teeth to produce
their own trill.)

Tim

[Tim Lang]

On 21.10.2022 23:44, Helmut Richter wrote:

>This remark applies only to r before the nucleus of a syllable, not after
>it. Outside NE Bavaria, the post-vocalic r is vocalised to become [ɐ] forming
>a diphthong with the preceding vowel. This vocalisation happens in many
>German regions, not only in Bavaria.

I'd rather say in virtually all provinces of the "reich". Exceptions:
only the Swiss regions of the Alemanian German, along with Vorarlberg
in Western Austria and in some regions of Suebia (incl. Allgäu). Only
there and only you can hear a clear-cut apical trilled r after vowels.

The rest of the German people, even well-trained ones for the stage
and radio + TV won't pronounce the r after vowels. Hence, Dagmar is
almost without exception pronounced Dagmaaaa by natives. And aber
abaaa or awwaaa not only by Bavarians but almost by all of them, incl.
the "Baaalinaaa, wa!" (ie, Berliner).

Yet, in certain cases it is pronounced though. E.g. in schwaar (this
means a dialectal ... schwer "heavy; difficult") and in war (waar and
wari in some (Austrian) areas), the Bavarian variant for wäre
(subjunctive of sein "to be"). Some natives who say Joa instead of
Jahr (year) do pronounce the r as well: Joar (but they are rather
a minority within the dialectal populace). The r is rather alive in
kicking in the regional variant of Eier (eggs): Oar. :)

Or the [ɐ] (usu. for -er-) turns - in various regions - to a heavy
[əː] or [ɜː], even tending to sound very close to an [o:] in some
Rhine as well as East-German regions.

>There is a funny story about a kindergarden in Bavaria where the kids were
>told to sort coloured toy blocks by their colour and by their form, but the
>two words turned out to be undistinguishable: [fɔɐm] is the normal Bavarian
>pronunciation of both "Form" and "Farbe" (colour).

But this is the ... normal pronunciation, I'm underscoring it: in
Hochdeutsch, in almost all regions of Germany (in Rhineland-Westfalia,
in Lower Saxony, in Berlin, in East-Germany). [fɔɐm] is pan-German.
Perhaps the situation might have been different in Grimm brethren's
times, but in modern German this is the standard pronunciation.
(Only the aforementioned exception areas still utter the r either
the uvular or the trilled apical one. And only in Hitler's years
many Nazis imitated him, exaggerating the pronunciation of the r
in such environments, but otherwise also the generations living
between 1900 and 1945 had the same idiosincrasies, in this respect,
as today. The proof: all the recordings on discs and the movie
footage.

>For "Form", this is
>immediate, for "Farbe", it comes from an appended -n to prevent the final -e
>(typical Bavarian), and then -bn assimilated to become -bm, and -bm condensed
>to become -m (the latter two steps happen also in German regions far from
>Bavaria, e.g. "haben" becoming "ham" in colloquial language).

Or it is added where High German doesn't have any of these: speibn
(that occasionally sounds as if it were ... speim) for speien "to spit"
or "to vomit". Similar occurrence: schneien (to snow) => Bavarian
schneibn.

>BTW, the same diphthong [ɔɐ] is also the regular pronunciation of
>standard-German "ei" in those cases where it was already "ei" in Middle High
>German: oans (eins), zwoa (zwei), i woaß (ich weiß) but not drei (drei),

In Austrian (esp. in the East of Austria), Bavarian woaß [voas] turns to
a waaß [va:s]. The same way Bavarian Schoaß (for Scheiße "shit, shite")
gets Schaaß (the Austrians esp. the Viennese prefer to spell it "Schas"
or "Schaas").

>weiße Foam (weiße Farbe).

This is a nice one - and unrelated to English foam.

>Yes, I know that word, and to me it tells that the apical r of C.R. was
>regarded as something special¹ – certainly Bavarian but by no means

That was rather a joke, ie, an exaggeration. How could have her r be
something special since most of those 11-12 million Bavarians plus
almost 10 million Austrians have uttered quite the same r? (In
Bavaria including the Eastern Swabians, e.g. of the areas of Augsburg,
Landsberg, Memmingen and the alpine province of Allgäu.)

>consistently spoken everywhere in Altbayern (the Bavarian-speaking part of
>Bavaria).

Nowadays most of Franconian German (Main-Fränkisch) is deemed to be
a Bavarian dialect as well (so that Altboarisch doesn't have a strict
border in Oberpfalz).

>This is certainly at least in parts an effect of the uvular r being
>standard in most of Germany but I do not think this frequent use of uvular
>prevocalic r has *exclusively* this cause.
>
>¹) Wikipedia says: "Bekannt wurde sie nicht zuletzt wegen ihres akzentuierten
>bairisch rollenden Zungenspitzen-R."

Irrespective of how the r is pronounced, the dialectal differentiations
are outlined and described by many other featurs, especially the
lexical ones (with whole lotta different vocabulary, starting e.g.
with Blaukraut instead of Rotkohl, Semmel instead of Brötchen and
Schrippe, as well as Paradeiser instead of Tomate, Trafik instead
of Tabakladen, Topfen instead of Quark, Kukuruz along with Mais); also
by grammar "deviations" (e.g. der Butter, das Monat; ich _bin_
gestanden; mer losse dr (! - ie, because Nominativ = Akkusativ
over there) Dom in Kölle). As well as various idiomatic locutions or
phrases.

>They would not say so if all TV presenters from Bavaria would use
>apical r.

This is correct. A vast majority of the population of Germany keeps
uvularizing in their native idiom/dialect, incl. in the "artificial"
German called High German or Hochdeutsch. But whenever radio-TV people
pronounce the trilled apex r, nobody criticizes them (neither their
bosses, nor their target audience). Especially in the region where
the trilling "apicals" are the majority. In those regions there has
been enough magma for "upheavals", the natives feeling that the
German Hochdeutsch in the media is far too ... "Prussian" (Northern)
both in pronunciations and in lexical selections. (Austrians replace
"Prussians" with the derogatory nickname for the same: "Piefke". :-))

Tim

[Helmut Richter]

On Sat, 22 Oct 2022, Tim Lang wrote:

> On 21.10.2022 23:44, Helmut Richter wrote:
>
> > This remark applies only to r before the nucleus of a syllable, not after
> > it. Outside NE Bavaria, the post-vocalic r is vocalised to become [ɐ]
> > forming
> > a diphthong with the preceding vowel. This vocalisation happens in many
> > German regions, not only in Bavaria.
>
> I'd rather say in virtually all provinces of the "reich". Exceptions:
> only the Swiss regions of the Alemanian German, along with Vorarlberg
> in Western Austria and in some regions of Suebia (incl. Allgäu). Only
> there and only you can hear a clear-cut apical trilled r after vowels.

I agree. I did not intend to give a survey of r-pronunciation across
Germany. Rather, I wanted to emphasise the vocalisation of postvocalic r
is not a specifically Bavarian feature. There are, however, also regions
where "Sport" is pronounced "Spocht" and not "Spoat" whereas
syllable-final r is vocalised nearly everywhere with some exceptions like
those you mentioned.

> The rest of the German people, even well-trained ones for the stage
> and radio + TV won't pronounce the r after vowels. Hence, Dagmar is
> almost without exception pronounced Dagmaaaa by natives.

Here, I disagree. In most German pronunciations, the letter name "Ka" and
"Kar", "Staat" and "Start" are distinguishable, the former with a
continuous [ɑː], the latter with a closure of the uvular region like the
onset of an approximant [ʁ]. (I was surprised to learn that English
pronunciation of "farther" is usually described as identical to "father" –
I had expected a similar distinction there as well.)

> > There is a funny story about a kindergarden in Bavaria where the kids were
> > told to sort coloured toy blocks by their colour and by their form, but the
> > two words turned out to be undistinguishable: [fɔɐm] is the normal Bavarian
> > pronunciation of both "Form" and "Farbe" (colour).
>
> But this is the ... normal pronunciation,

Of "Form": yes, of "Farbe": no. The punchline is the identity in Bavarian,
at least in Western Central Bavarian.

> > For "Form", this is
> > immediate, for "Farbe", it comes from an appended -n to prevent the final -e
> > (typical Bavarian), and then -bn assimilated to become -bm, and -bm
> > condensed
> > to become -m (the latter two steps happen also in German regions far from
> > Bavaria, e.g. "haben" becoming "ham" in colloquial language).

> > BTW, the same diphthong [ɔɐ] is also the regular pronunciation of
> > standard-German "ei" in those cases where it was already "ei" in Middle High
> > German: oans (eins), zwoa (zwei), i woaß (ich weiß) but not drei (drei),
>
> In Austrian (esp. in the East of Austria), Bavarian woaß [voas] turns to
> a waaß [va:s]. The same way Bavarian Schoaß (for Scheiße "shit, shite")
> gets Schaaß (the Austrians esp. the Viennese prefer to spell it "Schas"
> or "Schaas").

The same distinction is also made in Saxony and Berlin: there MHG -ei-
(= Bav. -oa-) is pronunced -ee- whereas MHG -î- is pronouned -ai-
everywhere except Switzerland. I have made a table with these distictions
which have also a number of exceptions:
https://hhr-m.de/de-vowels/history/#long

> > weiße Foam (weiße Farbe).
>
> This is a nice one - and unrelated to English foam.

I hesitated whether I should mention the German word "Feim", the cognate
of English "foam". It is now obsolete but not so long that it could not
appear here and there in conservative dialects such as rural Bavarian
ones, but I have no evidence. This would be a third word pronounced
"foam" (Form, Farbe, Feim).

--
Helmut Richter

[Ruud Harmsen]

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 16:40:25 +0200: Tim Lang <m...@privacy.net> scribeva:

>On 21.10.2022 00:33, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
>
>>>("Pair of brothers" is nonsense of course, siblings, brother and
>>>sister. But Hungarian has no gender distinction, that is why.)
>>
>>That doesn't follow. A quick look at Wiktionary confirms that
>>Hungarian very much has different words for "brother" and "sister";
>>in fact it's one of those languages that differentiates "older
>>brother", "younger brother", "older sister", "younger sister". The
>>"testvér" from above is a generic sibling, though.
>
>That's right.

He's back! Glad to see you again.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 16:40:25 +0200: Tim Lang <m...@privacy.net> scribeva:

>To Hungarians, testvér is quite ... vague. Therefore, they
>always use the precise synonyms above whenever referring
>to brothers and sisters and whenever knowing who's the younger
>and who's the elder one

Unless context and world knowledge make it clear what is meant, as in
https://www.teol.hu/helyi-kultura/2022/09/virtuoz-muveszettel-oregbitik-hirunket-hataron-innen-es-tul
from which I quoted:

"Az alsónyéki testvérpár ma már határainkon innen és túl egyaránt
ismert és kedvelt."

and of which via Google Translate and Wiktionary I could find out what
it meant.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 20:10:07 -0000 (UTC): Christian Weisgerber
<na...@mips.inka.de> scribeva:

>On 2022-10-21, Tim Lang <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>
>> In addition, Hungarians by and large use further words for
>> the siblings (testvér/ek):
>>
>> • húg [hu:g] "younger/little sister" a húgom "my sister"

>> • n?vér ['nøve?r] "elder sister" a n?vérem ['nøve?ræm]
>> "my elder sister"
>> • öcs [øt?] "younger/little bro'" az öccsém "my
>> • báty [b??c?] "elder bro'" a bátyám ['b??c???m]

>> "my elder bro'"
>
>What about "fivér", which is also offered by Wiktionary for "brother"?
>
>> This despite neighboring ... Austria, where the uvulation "starts"
>> within the German-speaking world (and gets "extreme" in Saxony, East
>
>Austro-Bavarian has an apical trill r, although I suppose the uvular
>pronunciation is spreading outside of dialect use since it is
>nowadays perceived as the standard pronunciation.
>
>For a while, the apical trill was known as "Carolin-Reiber-R" in
>Germany, after a TV presenter from Bavaria who conspicuously used
>that pronunciation.

Z.B. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNftvSR3cH0
Das finde ich persönlich das schönste Deutsch. Ich assoziiere das mit
Österreich, obwohl Carolin aus München stammt.

Wie das schweizerige Mädchen, aus der Nähe vor Zürich, Hochdeutsch
spricht, finde ich auch angenehm klingen.

>Uvular r in Western Europe is essentially an areal phenomenon that
>spread from Paris and now cuts across two language boundaries
>(French/West Germanic, West/North Germanic). See this map:
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttural_R#/media/File:Uvular_rhotics_in_Europe.png

That map isn't accurate for the Netherlands and Belgium. The uvular r
is much more widespread and common there. There are still regional
tendencies, though.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 11:30:34 +0200: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>
scribeva:

>Wie das schweizerige Mädchen, aus der Nähe vor Zürich, Hochdeutsch
>spricht, finde ich auch angenehm klingen.

Nein, aus Richigen bei Bern.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 00:32:27 +0200: Tim Lang <m...@privacy.net> scribeva:

>That's right. Carolin Reiber has a genuine Bavarian pronunciation
>in her standard/Hochdeutsch German. By the way, in the "sea" of
>uvular r Germany (as shown on the map), there are exceptions too
>now and then. Among the VIPs the politician Georg "Schorsch" Leber
>who had several positions in the federal gov't in the 70s-80s;
>from the state of Hesse. And the retired social-democrat Franz
>Müntefering, another well-known politician, from the province
>of Sauerland in North-Rhine Westfalia. Both with "Southern" trilled
>r's, "exotic" sounds in those provinces where only immigrants from
>the Romance and Slavic worlds and Germans from east-european
>"enclaves" utter such trilled apical r's. (I remember that Leber's
>r's often had the quality of ... English and Dutch r's, too.)

There isn't a single "Dutch r". The situation is very complicated in
that language, with personal, regional and positional varieties.

[Tim Lang]

On 22.10.2022 09:59, Helmut Richter wrote:

>I agree. I did not intend to give a survey of r-pronunciation across
>Germany.

OK.

>Rather, I wanted to emphasise the vocalisation of postvocalic r
>is not a specifically Bavarian feature.

That's right, and thank you for underlining this.

>Here, I disagree. In most German pronunciations, the letter name "Ka" and
>"Kar", "Staat" and "Start" are distinguishable, the former with a
>continuous [ɑː],

It depends on the individual native speaker as well as on his/her school
education and on the awareness (often induced only by school and the
Hochdeutsch lessons in school) of the necessity to pronounce that [r],
be it apical or uvular. And the joke "Spocht" for "Sport" is only
possible in area with an ubiquitous strong uvular r. In apical r areas
the joke goes the risk of not being understood. (I assume, it is not
"at home" in Bavaria, but rather in areas such as Northrhine-Westfalia.)

>the latter with a closure of the uvular region like the
>onset of an approximant [ʁ].

Yes. This'd be the "standard" pronunciation at least in Germany (but in
Austria too, actually.)

>(I was surprised to learn that English
>pronunciation of "farther" is usually described as identical to "father" –
>I had expected a similar distinction there as well.)

Because esp. in British English, in the "received" standard
pronunciation there is no [r]. We hear it rather in Ireland, Scotland
and of course in the US and Canada. (BTW: nowadays, instead of farther
(for distances, spaces), almost all "Anglos" tend to use further as
well.)

>Of "Form": yes, of "Farbe": no. The punchline is the identity in Bavarian,

>at least in Western Central Bavarian.´

Yes because esp. in Bavaria there are quite a few cases of vowels
followed by a "strong" r. A quite strange peculiarity whenever this
occurs, as if those native speakers would "wake up" all of a sudden,
realizing there is an r, that should, must, be pronounced, in order to
avoid misunderstandings. (Henc my mentioning of Joar for Jahr and
war for wäre, where the speakers of the most radical Bavarian
subdialects in "Altbayern" pronounce a trilled apical r as the
one uttered by Romance and Slavic people.) But virtually none of
them would call their wifes or daughters Dagmaaarrrrrrrrr,
but Dagmaaaaa - in which you'd be waiting for the trilled r as
those who've been waiting for Godot. :)

>The same distinction is also made in Saxony and Berlin: there MHG -ei-
>(= Bav. -oa-) is pronunced -ee- whereas MHG -î- is pronouned -ai-
>everywhere except Switzerland.

That's right. (Ik mach aus dir zwee Kleene. :-))

>I hesitated whether I should mention the German word "Feim", the cognate
>of English "foam".

Yes, worth mentioning (why not?).

Thnx
Tim

[Tim Lang]

On 22.10.2022 11:18, Ruud Harmsen wrote:

>Unless context and world knowledge make it clear what is meant, as in
>https://www.teol.hu/helyi-kultura/2022/09/virtuoz-muveszettel-oregbitik-hirunket-hataron-innen-es-tul
>from which I quoted:
>"Az alsónyéki testvérpár ma már határainkon innen és túl egyaránt
>ismert és kedvelt."
>and of which via Google Translate and Wiktionary I could find out what
>it meant.

Where fivérek (or fivérpár) wouldn't fit, since ... brother
& sister. Thus, only testvérek.

As for translate.google, the "testvérpár" is a bit difficult.

The author of the original text very well could've written/said
"az alsónyéki testvérek". Without adding pár "pair", since it
is self-understood that "siblings" must be at least ... two of
them (hence ... pair).
Esp. when the text shows further details referring to both of them.
Such translation machines cannot deal with style and idiomatic
intricacies and individual preferences in making phrases and
sentences. So, human translators & interpretes aren't "outdated".
At least until a certain advancement in the usage of the ... "AI". :-)

Tim

[Tim Lang]

On 22.10.2022 11:30, Ruud Harmsen wrote:

>Z.B. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNftvSR3cH0
>Das finde ich persönlich das schönste Deutsch. Ich assoziiere das mit
>Österreich, obwohl Carolin aus München stammt.

By and large, this is the Hochdeutsch style in the speech by most
educated Bavarians (from Upper Bavaria, Nether Bavaria and Oberpfalz).
Also heard in whole lotta TV-theatre and TV series made in Munich.
(Even including Bavarian actors with clear uvulary r, which is not
typical of the Bavarian dialect/s.)

(And, as regional dialects, the closest relatives are those in the
neighboring Austrian regions of Upper Austria and Salzburg. Tyrol
and Vorarlberg: the former is kind of a Bavarian-Suebian mixture
linguistically, and Vorarlberg a Suebian-Alemanian one.)
(BTW: München = Minga in Bavarian, with the -ng- as the same in
English, e.g. in thing, something, nothing, English)

>Wie das schweizerige Mädchen, aus der Nähe vor Zürich, Hochdeutsch
>spricht, finde ich auch angenehm klingen.

Bei jenem "oder": ooo-drrrrr? :-)

Uf Wiederluëge.

Tim
--
Minstrels - Grüezi wohl, Frau Stirnimaa (early 70s)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvDCIXhviF0>
live @ ORF (Austria's public TV)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggVPPKpmTm8>
Swiss comedian Emil Steinberger
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cij_GMunCjg>
Swiss comedian Marco Rima (here some Swiss dialect)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqgn3haf5e8>

[Tim Lang]

On 22.10.2022 11:51, Ruud Harmsen wrote:

>There isn't a single "Dutch r". The situation is very complicated in
>that language, with personal, regional and positional varieties.

I mean the one (I don't know how it is called) that sound very close
to certain types of r in Ireland, USA/Canada (for English) as well as
in ... Albanian, I don't know whether it is written -r- or -rr-.
(Pronunciation: with the apex intensely "curled" backwards). Strange
enough that Albanian has such an [r] in an "ocean" of trilled apical
[r]'s.

Tim

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Friday, October 21, 2022 at 5:44:18 PM UTC-4, Helmut Richter wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Oct 2022, Christian Weisgerber wrote:

> > Austro-Bavarian has an apical trill r, although I suppose the uvular
> > pronunciation is spreading outside of dialect use since it is nowadays
> > perceived as the standard pronunciation.
>
> This remark applies only to r before the nucleus of a syllable, not after
> it. Outside NE Bavaria, the post-vocalic r is vocalised to become [ɐ] forming
> a diphthong with the preceding vowel. This vocalisation happens in many
> German regions, not only in Bavaria.
>
> There is a funny story about a kindergarden in Bavaria where the kids were
> told to sort coloured toy blocks by their colour and by their form, but the
> two words turned out to be undistinguishable: [fɔɐm] is the normal Bavarian
> pronunciation of both "Form" and "Farbe" (colour). For "Form", this is
> immediate, for "Farbe", it comes from an appended -n to prevent the final -e
> (typical Bavarian), and then -bn assimilated to become -bm, and -bm condensed
> to become -m (the latter two steps happen also in German regions far from
> Bavaria, e.g. "haben" becoming "ham" in colloquial language).

That's truly pernicious homophony. Some resolution must have emerged.
In the English of St. Louis, Missouri, and environs, "pin" and "pen" have
merged and the former is replaced by "ink pin." That's a "marker" -- if other
problems are cause by the /I/ ~ /E/ collapse before a tautosyllabic nasal,
they haven't made it into the folklore.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 15:44:19 +0200: Tim Lang <m...@privacy.net> scribeva:

Yes, the so called Gooise r, because it first emerged in children's
songs, in the 1980s, in a yearly episode organised by
"omroepvereniging" (Rundfunkverein) VARA (originally Vereniging van
Arbeiders Radio Amateurs). Hilversum and Bussum are places where a lot
of studios are, and the region they're in is called "het Gooi".

It is rather recent, wasn't there when I learnt to talk, and is now, I
think, already "op z’n retour", becoming less widespread and obsolete.

[Helmut Richter]

Bavarian has a strong aversion against a final -e (schwa) where there is
one in standard German: i såg (ich sage), i nimm (ich nehme), Tassn
(Tasse), Wiesn (Wiese; e.g. the one where the Oktoberfest is).

For feminine nouns, there are three mechanisms to avoid the -e; some
words can apply more than one:

a) append a syllabic -n: Tasse -> Tassn¹, Farbe -> Foam, Nase -> Nåsn,
Brille -> Bruin, Fliege -> Fliang, Rübe -> Ruam.

¹) T is written here for etymology only; in most contexts, t=d, p=b,
and before consonant k=g: unaspirated, lax, voiceless.

b) remove the final -e: Soße=Sauce -> Soss, Straße -> Strass, Hetze -> Hatz,
Geschichte -> Gschicht, Sprache -> Språch, Frage -> Fråg.

c) change gender to masculine or neuter, so that the -e is dropped anyway:
die Schnecke -> der Schneck, die Ratte -> der Ratz, die Spalte -> der Spalt,
die Schokolade -> der/as Schoklad, die Zehe -> der Zeh,
die Sache -> das Sach.

For some words, both (a) and (b) are possible: Strass[n], Bruck[n]. If you
do this with Farbe -> Fårb, there is no way for the final -m.

Moreover, the vowels are perhaps not totally equal but only near enough
that they can be misunderstood because of an overlap in the possible
individual or regional realisations: „Form“ more [ɔɐ], „Farbe“ more [ɒɐ].
If one is aware of the problem, one could pronounce the difference, e.g.
„Form“ with a more close o.

--
Helmut Richter

[Ruud Harmsen]

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 15:38:08 +0200: Tim Lang <m...@privacy.net> scribeva:

>(BTW: München = Minga in Bavarian, with the -ng- as the same in
>English, e.g. in thing, something, nothing, English)

Strange. I heard Münhen, with a /h/ replacing the ich-Laut, from a
colleague from Ingolstadt, 36 years ago. Is the accent already that
different at such a short distance? That's possible, there are marked
differences between Rotterdam and The Hague too, at a distance of some
15 to 20 km.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 15:11:06 +0200: Tim Lang <m...@privacy.net> scribeva:

Agreed. Google Translate, DeepL and Bing Translator are very good
nowadays, so much better than 5 or 10 years ago. But they also still
make very strange and subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, mistakes.
Thorough checking by a competent human always remains necessary.

But for getting the gist of a text, in a language you hardly know, or
not at all, they are certainly useful. Here I could get the
information I wanted to obtain, namely: Having the same surname (which
is also in the name of the group, Zsikós Zenekar), are they related,
and if so, how?

[Ruud Harmsen]

>On 22.10.2022 11:51, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>>There isn't a single "Dutch r". The situation is very complicated in
>>that language, with personal, regional and positional varieties.

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 15:44:19 +0200: Tim Lang <m...@privacy.net> scribeva:

>I mean the one (I don't know how it is called) that sound very close
>to certain types of r in Ireland, USA/Canada (for English) as well as
>in ... Albanian, I don't know whether it is written -r- or -rr-.

Single r, I think.

>(Pronunciation: with the apex intensely "curled" backwards). Strange
>enough that Albanian has such an [r] in an "ocean" of trilled apical
>[r]'s.

I think they have the trilled one too, written rr, even initially,
other than in Spanish and Portuguese.

[Dingbat]

On Friday, October 21, 2022 at 3:32:30 PM UTC-7, Tim Lang wrote:
> On 21.10.2022 22:10, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
>
> >What about "fivér", which is also offered by Wiktionary for "brother"?
> Yes. A bit more like "Gebrüder" in German; e.g. a Grimm fivérek
> (but also a Grimm testvérek); cf. fi "son" and fiu "boy"; as for
> female siblings: a Brontë nővérek (but also a Brontë testvérek).
> The same way a Kennedy fivérek/testvérek; a Kelly fivérek/testvérek;
> a Gábor nővérek/testvérek (including Zsa Zsa Gábor); a Kessler
> nővérek/testvérek (ie, the German twin sisters).
> >Austro-Bavarian has an apical trill r,
> That's right: the trilled r is typical of Bavarian incl. the Austrian
> and Franconian variants; as well a big "chunk" of Suebia, esp. the
> easternmost regions of it, whereas e.g. Stuttgart already means
> one of the uvular-r "epitomes" among the German dialects (ie, the
> same dialect with two different r's).
>

What are the two different r's? I talked to Peter Druschel when
he was a prof at Rice U. Saying his name, he pronounced <er>
as a little more open than [@] and <Dr> with a dental trill like in
Spanish or Russian, so neither context had a uvular r.
He was born in central Bavaria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Druschel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Reichenhall
>
Someone's claim that Vr is a diphthong is wrong in the contexts
of <Peter> and <besser>. I hear it as a diphthong in one
pronunciation of <Wirt> / <Wirth>.

[Tim Lang]

On 11.12.2022 05:01, Dingbat wrote:

>What are the two different r's? I talked to Peter Druschel when
> he was a prof at Rice U. Saying his name, he pronounced <er>
> as a little more open than [@] and <Dr> with a dental trill like in
> Spanish or Russian, so neither context had a uvular r.

Highly numerous (or ... most of) Bavarians (including Franconian
speakers in the North, incl. Nuremberg etc; as well as East
Suebians in Western Bavaria), Austria and all German-speaking
exclaves throughout Eastern Europe pronounce the -r- with an
apical trill (and virtually none the uvular r). In an extreme
contrast with their neighbors the Western Suebians and the
Germans in East Germany: Thuringians and Saxons, whose uvular
is as radical that it alters neighboring vowels in peculiar
ways, so that everybody recognizes their Suebian and the Saxon
dialect in a second upon the 1st mumbling

>Someone's claim that Vr is a diphthong is wrong in the contexts
>of <Peter> and <besser>. I hear it as a diphthong in one
>pronunciation of <Wirt> / <Wirth>.

Where is the diphthong? (Usu., a diphthong = 2 vowels uttered in
a syllable. In the above words, no -e- and no -i- in these
words are pronounced AFAIK in any German dialect in a diphthonged
way. (E.g. /pejtəː, pajtəː, pijtəː, pjetəː/ or so would be imaginable,
but IMHO in no German dialect is this extant. Even the North German
diminutive of Peter, which in English is Pete (with a long /i:/),
is short: Pit /pit/.)

Something else, as a BTW: -ir- in Wirt(h) (along with -im-, e.g.
in schwimmen) might also be pronounced this way

slightly /ür/, or even almost as /ɨr/ or /ɯr/.

chiefly/only by Germans from Northern Germany (especially from
areas where their dialects belong to the "Low German" group)
whenever speaking standard German (Hochdeutsch).

Which is never talked of, neither by logopeds and other personnel
who teach radio and TV people in their drills aimed at eliminating
most dialectal syncrasies from their "Hochdeutsch".

Which to South-German "ears" always have a strange, eery sound:
as if Fisch, Tisch, schwimmen would sound like Füsch, Tüsch,
schwümmen. Again: whenver the -i- is followed by such consonants
as /r, m, ʃ/, and it has to stay short. This "deviation" is
caused in those parts of the German-speaking world esp. because
of the shortness of this /ɪ/. In the "Anglo" world, both in
N-Amer and in UK this also occurs, but there, the short /ɪ/
sounds to the ears of the outer universe as ... /e/, as if
the words would be spelled thes, morneng, shet, het. Although, there
are various cases where the same native-speakers are able to
utter ... proper short /ɪ/'s. Foreigners, even extremely advanced
English learners, often tend to pronounce the English short /ɪ/
as a long one, /i:/, mostly not being aware of this. An interesting
phenomenon, related to the BE/AE /ɪ/ rendered as an /e/, can be
heard in some Southern sub-dialects ot the Low German area of
dialects, e.g. where ich "I" is ... ech. (E.g. in Luxembourg
and the neighboring Franconian dialects, as well as in the
subdialects of the Transylvanian Saxons of Romania, whose ancestors
once emigrated from exactly the same areas, preserving until today
such modifications as /ɪ/ => /e/, /ʊ/ => /a/ (e.g. Hund => Hand).

Tim

[Christian Weisgerber]

On 2022-12-11, Dingbat <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

[allophones of German /r/]

> Someone's claim that Vr is a diphthong is wrong in the contexts
> of <Peter> and <besser>.

Final unstressed -er is realized as [ɐ]. It is not a diphthong.

> I hear it as a diphthong in one
> pronunciation of <Wirt> / <Wirth>.

Yes, [vɪɐt].

[Dingbat]

On Sunday, December 11, 2022 at 3:34:39 AM UTC-8, Tim Lang wrote:
> On 11.12.2022 05:01, Dingbat wrote:
>
> >What are the two different r's? I talked to Peter Druschel when
> > he was a prof at Rice U. Saying his name, he pronounced <er>
> > as a little more open than [@] and <Dr> with a dental trill like in
> > Spanish or Russian, so neither context had a uvular r.
>
> Highly numerous (or ... most of) Bavarians (including Franconian
> speakers in the North, incl. Nuremberg etc; as well as East
> Suebians in Western Bavaria), Austria and all German-speaking
> exclaves throughout Eastern Europe pronounce the -r- with an
> apical trill (and virtually none the uvular r).
>

1) Spanish has 2 trills, the one in TRES and the one in PERRO.
The dialectal trill you refer to is like the trill in TRES. Is the
the trill in PERRO not an apical trill?
2) In TRINK DIS FRISCH, a German who used a denti-alveolar
trill in TRINK didn't use the same trill in FRISCH. He used a
uvular r laxed to resemble an approximant.

>
> In an extreme
> contrast with their neighbors the Western Suebians and the
> Germans in East Germany: Thuringians and Saxons, whose uvular
> is as radical that it alters neighboring vowels in peculiar
> ways, so that everybody recognizes their Suebian and the Saxon
> dialect in a second upon the 1st mumbling
> >Someone's claim that Vr is a diphthong is wrong in the contexts
> >of <Peter> and <besser>. I hear it as a diphthong in one
> >pronunciation of <Wirt> / <Wirth>.
>
> Where is the diphthong?
> (Usu., a diphthong = 2 vowels uttered in
> a syllable. In the above words, no -e- and no -i- in these
> words are pronounced AFAIK in any German dialect in a diphthonged
> way. (E.g. /pejtəː, pajtəː, pijtəː, pjetəː/ or so would be imaginable,
> but IMHO in no German dialect is this extant.
>
> Even the North German
> diminutive of Peter, which in English is Pete (with a long /i:/),
> is short: Pit /pit/.)
>
> Something else, as a BTW: -ir- in Wirt(h) (along with -im-, e.g.
> in schwimmen) might also be pronounced this way
>
> slightly /ür/, or even almost as /ɨr/ or /ɯr/.
>
> chiefly/only by Germans from Northern Germany (especially from
> areas where their dialects belong to the "Low German" group)
> whenever speaking standard German (Hochdeutsch).
>

I heard Wirt as if it were spelled Wjert. <je> was the diphthong.
I don't know the speaker's dialect of German.

[Tim Lang]

On 13.12.2022 14:18, Dingbat wrote:

>1) Spanish has 2 trills, the one in TRES and the one in PERRO.
>The dialectal trill you refer to is like the trill in TRES. Is the
>the trill in PERRO not an apical trill?

I don't know the "official" explanations. Only that to my own
ears the latter, ie, -rr-, is a longer ("intenser") trilled
/r/. (With no "collateral" "half"-sounds attached to the /r/,
thus unlike the Czech r-with-the-Haček-sign or unlike some
kind of Turkish (or Turkic) /r/, which seems to be similar,
although different from the Czech haček-/r/.)

In "un perro ladra" the former is longer/intenser, the latter
is "normal" and quite the same as most of the trilled r's in
European languages.

>2) In TRINK DIS FRISCH, a German who used a denti-alveolar
>trill in TRINK didn't use the same trill in FRISCH. He used a
>uvular r laxed to resemble an approximant.

Of course. But uvular-r Germans usually uvulize the r in "trink(en)"
as well. In the German-speaking world there is a "third" population,
that "oscillates" by using both kind of r's. (And all of them
replace the r in whole lotta certain circumstances replacing it
with the /ɒ/, as is the case in Wirt(h), which I forgot to
mention, and thanks for completing that. I add that most
German native speakers pronounce this -irt /ɪɒt/, ie, most
regional dialects, with the exceptions of some Swiss Alemanian
ones as well as of some dialects in East European German-speaking
exclaves. These don't have /ɪɒt/, nor have they the "mute" r in
-ar, er, ir, or, ur-; thus, they will always pronounce Qatar
/katar/ and never /kata:/, as is bronounced by most Germans and
Austrians. (Which one can hear in every newscast (radio/TV) now
because of the soccer world championship; because of the gas
exports/imports; and because of the accusation that "Kah-tah"
bribed the vicepres. of the Europarl.)

BTW: "frisch". People from North Germany tend to pronounce
this word in their standard German as if it were "früsch" or
even "frɨsch" or "frɯsch", ie, with kind of vowels that
officially do not exist either in the theory books or in the
minds of the native speakers. Although the talk apparatus of
a high percentage of the population utters that indeed.
(But this belongs to aspects of the "narrow transcription",
ie, of interest perhaps for the most advanced learners of
Deutsch, who also might be attracted by regional German
such as "Düütsch" and "Tajtsch" :-)).

>I heard Wirt as if it were spelled Wjert. <je> was the diphthong.
>I don't know the speaker's dialect of German.

Yes, indeed. I didn't realize you mean exactly this. /vɪɒt/
Here, in using /ɒ/ instead of /r/ in certain vowel-consonant
combinations, this is a general phenomenon, not only in most
regional dialects but also in the standard language, in the
pronunciation by the best radio and TV readers of news bulletins.
(In the 20s, 30s, 40s, some Nazi luminaries, incl. the fuhrer
himself (actually, the rest ... imitated him) avoided in their
discourses as much as possible the /ɒ/ instead of /r/ and
pronounced clear /r/'s. Many of them, esp. from Southern
provinces, pronounced trilled r's, as if they would've been
Swiss alemans or East-Europe Germans or ... Italians, Russians
etc. ;-) (Because of such tiny phon. differences, for example,
many natives in Germany have thought that some immigrants of
German descent (I mean those who always have spoken their
regional East-European German, incl. most of the Yiddish
speakers), might be ... Croats, Serbians, even Greek or from
Hungary, Slovakia, the Czek republic or Poland and Lithuania.
Because of the trilled r (along with a few other idiosincrasies,
especially pertaining to long and short vowels, and the lacking
of "aspiration"/"Behauchung" of certain stops, especially of
P, T, K).

To most German-speaking people of the "uvular party", /ʁ/, the
trilled pronounciation of the /r/ is perceived as almost ...
impossible. The "triller party" also deems the uvular /ʁ/ as
almos impossible to pronounce. This is obvious too whenever
German-sp. natives speak English: the "uvulars" use their
uvular /ʁ/ as well, when those certain persons aren't able to
pronounce some kind of English or AE /r/, even after 30 years
of staying in UK or US or Canada. (The US "celeb" actor Tom Hanks
alway makes funny jokes based on that, imitating such Germans.
Cf. Youtube, various sequences from US-UK TV talk shows.)

Tim

[Dingbat]

On Tuesday, December 13, 2022 at 6:16:46 AM UTC-8, Tim Lang wrote:
> On 13.12.2022 14:18, Dingbat wrote:
>
> >Spanish has 2 trills, the one in TRES and the one in PERRO.

> >The dialectal German trill you refer to is like the trill in TRES.
> >Is the trill in PERRO not an apical trill?

> I don't know the "official" explanations. Only that to my own
> ears the latter, ie, -rr-, is a longer ("intenser") trilled
> /r/.
>

> In "un perro ladra" the former is longer/intenser, the latter
> is "normal" and quite the same as most of the trilled r's in
> European languages.
>

I hear the two as different phonemes since there are 2 r
phonemes in Malayalam.
pero and ladra would be spelled with ര Unicode 03D0
perro would be spelled with റ Unicode 03D1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Malayalam
https://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0D00.pdf

[Peter T. Daniels]

Yesterday I listened to a recording by the celebrated baritone
Friedrich Schorr of a song cycle by Schumann (I think that was
the one from 1928) and recalled the earlier contributions in this
thread: _every_ /r/ -- initial, post-consonantal, or final -- is an apical
trill -- except for the two in the word "nimmermehr."

Now I'm always counseling Ranjit and Ruud not to take singing
as a legitimate source of dialect information, and the slip(?) on
that one word might indicate that it's all artificial, but it was quite
striking and rather odd--sounding.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Tue, 13 Dec 2022 10:50:20 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:

>Yesterday I listened to a recording by the celebrated baritone
>Friedrich Schorr of a song cycle by Schumann (I think that was
>the one from 1928) and recalled the earlier contributions in this
>thread: _every_ /r/ -- initial, post-consonantal, or final -- is an apical
>trill -- except for the two in the word "nimmermehr."

This one? From 1938, not 1928.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvWWf99b5Jo

Sounds artificial too me, Bühnendeutsch. Pronouncing the h in ‘Ruhe’
is also rather unnatural, nobody does that in normal speech AFAIK.
Does it have an etymological basis? Are English rest and Dutch rust
cognates?
It’s purely orthographical:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ruhe#Etymology_2
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/r%C5%8Dw%C5%8D
Not related:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rust#Etymology_1_2

Caveat auditor: in general, you shouldn’t be using singing to learn
about the phonology of a language! :)

[Ruud Harmsen]

Thu, 15 Dec 2022 13:32:37 +0100: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>
scribeva:

>This one? From 1938, not 1928.
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvWWf99b5Jo

Der Wald, männlich.
Im Niederländischen: het woud, sächlich. Merkwürdig, oder?

[Ruud Harmsen]

ffThu, 15 Dec 2022 13:37:38 +0100: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>

scribeva:

>Thu, 15 Dec 2022 13:32:37 +0100: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com>
>scribeva:
>>This one? From 1938, not 1928.
>>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvWWf99b5Jo
>
>Der Wald, männlich.
>Im Niederländischen: het woud, sächlich. Merkwürdig, oder?

Masculin in Proto-West-Germanic:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-West_Germanic/wal%C3%BEu
and Proto-Germanic:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/wal%C3%BEuz
In Old-English, it was also masculin:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/weald#Old_English

The historical dictionary WNT says nothing about a gender change:
https://gtb.ivdnt.org/iWDB/search?actie=article&wdb=WNT&id=M087276&lemmodern=woud&domein=0&conc=true
It was already neutre in Middle Dutch and Old Dutch:
https://gtb.ivdnt.org/iWDB/search?actie=article&wdb=ONW&id=ID13&lemmodern=woud&domein=0&conc=true

[Helmut Richter]

I happen to just have written a contribution on the German r in another
newsgroup. I expect the participants of this thread to be able to read it in
German.

From: Helmut Richter <hr.u...@email.de>
Newsgroups: de.etc.sprache.deutsch
Subject: Re: Welcher Artikel ist richtig?
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2022 01:19:03 +0100
Message-ID: <abb22b0-2941-52fe...@email.de>

On Tue, 13 Dec 2022, Martin Gerdes wrote:

> Für jeden Japaner unglaublich wichtig ist "Sakura", die Kirschblüte.
> Transkribiert wird das Wort mit einem r, was ich lautlich für zutreffend
> halte. Die Japaner kennen kein deutsches l

Die Verwechslungsgefahr ist wesentlich größer, wenn das /r/ mit nur einem
Zungenschlag (neudeutsch Tap oder Flap) gespochen wird [ɾ]. Dann ist
besonders zwischen vorderen Vokalen wie i und e der Unterschied zwischen
/r/, /l/ und /d/ gering. Ich erinnere mich, wie mir jemand in einem
fremden Land erklärt hat, man begrüße sich auf der Straße mit „ugoni?e“,
ich aber seinem Vorbild nicht entnehmen konnte, ob das ? ein r, l oder d
sein soll. Mir schriftlich denkendem Menschen hat das das Merken des Worts
sehr erschwert.

[ɾ] kommt in spanisch „toro“ (Stier) vor, [r] in spanisch „torre“ (Turm),
und der „torrero“ (Leuchtturmwärter) hat beide, im Gegensatz zum „torero“
(Stierkämpfer).

Ein /r/, das mit mehreren Schlägen gerollt wird [r] oder das am Zäpfchen
gerollt oder gerieben ([ʀ] oder [​ʁ]) wird, kann kaum mit einem /l/
verwechselt werden, mindestens von jemandem nicht, dessen Muttersprache
zwischen /r/ und /l/ unterscheidet.

> und auch nicht die Vielfalt des r.

... die mit [ʀ, ʁ, r] sehr verkürzt dargestellt wird. Selbst die
/r/-Laute, die keine Vokale sind, umfassen mindestens [ɾ] (wenn ein Franke
„Franke“ [fɾaŋgɛ] sagt) und verschiedene stimmlose Varianten („und jetzt
zum Spocht“). Dazu kommen noch verschiedene a-ähnliche Vokalfärbungen, die
zum Teil den Vokal vor dem /r/ ersetzen (Vater -> Vata), zum Teil zum
Diphthong machen (Herr -> Häa). Und von einer schwäbischen Form weiß ich
gar nicht, wie man sie beschreiben soll (Bergwerk -> Bʁkwʁk praktisch ohne
als solchen erkennbaren Vokal). Manchmal reicht ein schlichtes [h] als
Ersatz für ein /r/: wenn jemand „Bhot“ [b̥hoːt] sagt, wird meistens eher
„Brot“ verstanden als „Boot“, weil bei letzterem die Lippen ohne Pause zum
/o/ geöffnet würden. Auch das würde akzeptiert, ohne dass man einen
Sprachfehler oder einen Dialekt vermutet. Freilich – Standard ist das
nicht, aber wer spricht schon Standard? Bundespräsidenten nicht, sondern
nur Nachrichtensprecher und Schauspieler, wenns die Rolle erfordert.

Unterschätzt wird auch die stellenweise Kleinflächigkeit der Gebiete. Das
schwäbische Beispiel gilt sicher nicht für ganz Württemberg, und wenn das
gerollte [r] gern als „bairisch“ bezeichnet wird, gilt es wohl auch nicht
für ganz Altbayern (oder nur bis zur Generation vor mir).

--
Helmut Richter

[Tim Lang]

On 15.12.2022 13:32, Ruud Harmsen wrote:

>Tue, 13 Dec 2022 10:50:20 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
><gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:
>
>>Yesterday I listened to a recording by the celebrated baritone
>>Friedrich Schorr of a song cycle by Schumann (I think that was
>>the one from 1928) and recalled the earlier contributions in this
>>thread: _every_ /r/ -- initial, post-consonantal, or final -- is an
>>apical trill -- except for the two in the word "nimmermehr."
>
>This one? From 1938, not 1928.
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvWWf99b5Jo
>
>Sounds artificial too me, Bühnendeutsch.

Yes, Bühnendeutsch, esp. as far as "Ruhe" is concerned. But
it was both: "modisch" (a typical theater/movie style of that time
period), and ... East-European kind of Hochdeutsch-German. But in
the case of this artist, Schorr, in spite of all that, his Hoch-
deutsch German pronunciation is quite "neutral", Germany-like.

The R's are trilled, which is typical of virtually all East-European
German l. speakers, incl. all native-speakers exclaves. OTOH, the
uvular R is pronounced only by those who can't trill the R in
no other language they also speak (e.g. Polish, Russian, Ukrainian,
Hungarian, Romanian, Croatian/Serbian).

I'm underlining here Shorr's trills by doubling the: -rr-, quoting from
the lyrics of the song:

"Aus derr Heimat .. Wolken herr ... Aberr Vaterr und Mutterr ...
dorrt keinerr mehrr ... überr mirr ... keinerrrr ... mehrr herr"
(In keiner and mehr her he even exaggerates the trilled R, so
that connoisseurs instantly ask themselves "Polska? Russki?")

(Note the natural positions of the articulating system:
the trilled R is one "extreme", but the uvular one is already
kind of "intermediary", the /ʁ/ can be pronounced in various
ways, among which the almost ... "inaudible" ones. Before
the German R becomes a ... vowel. In similar circumstances
as in English, yet German is "conservative" in this respect
(perhaps as the English was in Shakespeare's time or in earlier
times).

By the way "dort" (engl. "there"): in everyday's German, the
vast majority of the German and Austrian populations say something
like /dɔɒt, dɔːɒt, dʊɔɒt, dʊɔːɒt/. Most or all of those use the
uvular R (tens and tens of millions in Germany) will utter /dɔʁt/,
with a clear /ʁ/, whenever wishing to render an "exquisite"
Hochdeutsch German (as on stage or in a radio or TV newscast show).
The trilled R in such a circumstance will be uttered rather in
certain dialect areas, such as Eastern Suebia and in the far North
of Germany (otherwise only in the East-Europe exclaves and
Switzerland). Otherwise, the trill-R German natives will replace
the R before T with the vowels above. The same happens with the
popular word ... "sport". But many "Uvulars" in Northern areas
of Germany (starting with Cologne) will pronounce their uvular R
in "dort" and "sport" in a way that, normally, is written like
this: -ch-, which corresponds to the Anglo-French rendering -kh-
in written. IPA/API: /x/- (But a bit "stronger" than -ch- in
acht, Obacht, Achtung & Celtic Loch Ness. By many natives
pronounced with a slight ... trilling of the uvula, too!
In acht, Obacht, Achtung and ... Zug, Flug, Zeug and similar
words with the typical "Frank" G=>kh, the uvula would stay
flabby, without any tremor.). Thus, Sport bekomes Spocht (ie,
"shpokht"). :-) (Esp. Austrians deride Germans, a.k.a. "Piefkes",
because of this pronunciation "Schpocht/Schbocht" /ʃpɔxt, ʃpɒxt/. :))

>Pronouncing the h in ‘Ruhe’
>is also rather unnatural, nobody does that in normal speech AFAIK.

This is correct. Most intervocalic H's aren't pronounced. (e.g.
Höhe and höher ("height & higher"): no one utters the second H.
But in Hohenlohe, Hohenstaufen, Hohenzollern, some might pronounce
the second H though, but always in an ... emphatic (as well as
weird) way, prompting many a brow to move slightly upwards. :-)

(In Bavarian, a dialect spoken in Bavaria and Austria, "Ruhe" is "Ruah"
/approx. rʊ-a or rʊwa or rʊwə/, e.a. as in the saying "Du host Recht,
und i (hob) mei Ruah" /dʊ host rɛxt unt i hob mɑɪ 'rʊʌ/. (Hochdt. "Du
hast Recht, und ich habe meine Ruhe".)

rgds
Tim

[Christian Weisgerber]

On 2022-12-15, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:

>>Yesterday I listened to a recording by the celebrated baritone
>>Friedrich Schorr of a song cycle by Schumann (I think that was
>>the one from 1928) and recalled the earlier contributions in this
>>thread: _every_ /r/ -- initial, post-consonantal, or final -- is an apical
>>trill -- except for the two in the word "nimmermehr."
>
> This one? From 1938, not 1928.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvWWf99b5Jo
>
> Sounds artificial too me, Bühnendeutsch.

Yeah, that's some sort of singing register. Compare French, where
the usually silent -e's are suddenly pronounced as schwas in such
contexts.

> Pronouncing the h in ‘Ruhe’
> is also rather unnatural, nobody does that in normal speech AFAIK.
> Does it have an etymological basis? Are English rest and Dutch rust
> cognates?

Those are cognate with "Rast". Well, it's more complicated, since
the English word has umlaut and the Dutch ablaut, but they're related
anyway.
https://www.dwds.de/wb/etymwb/Rast

I think most -h in Modern German are orthographical, but there must
have been an etymological basis for a few, which was then generalized.
The alternation hoch/hoh- hints at... something, I guess. :-)

[Tim Lang]

On 15.12.2022 14:39, Helmut Richter wrote:

>Ein /r/, das mit mehreren Schlägen gerollt wird [r] oder das am Zäpfchen
>gerollt oder gerieben ([ʀ] oder [​ʁ]) wird, kann kaum mit einem /l/
>verwechselt werden, mindestens von jemandem nicht, dessen Muttersprache
>zwischen /r/ und /l/ unterscheidet.

Hence, it is weird in Europe to have the prejudice that Japanese and
Chinese couldn't utter any /r/, replacing it with /l/, when the reality
shows quite the contrary: Hiroshima, Toshiro, Buntaro & zillions of
other words containing r's in Japanese, and even in Mandarin: why
would they transliterate ... "Ren-Min-Bi"? I've never heard or read
*Hiloshima, Toshilo, Buntalo, neither LenMinBi. :-)

>>und auch nicht die Vielfalt des r.
>
>... die mit [ʀ, ʁ, r] sehr verkürzt dargestellt wird. Selbst die
>/r/-Laute, die keine Vokale sind, umfassen mindestens [ɾ] (wenn ein Franke
>„Franke“ [fɾaŋgɛ] sagt) und verschiedene stimmlose Varianten („und jetzt
>zum Spocht“).

Oha: Sagt der Frange auch Schbochd? :-)

Dazu kommen noch verschiedene a-ähnliche Vokalfärbungen, die
> zum Teil den Vokal vor dem /r/ ersetzen (Vater -> Vata),

Ja, weil im deutschen Sprachraum keine Schule (mit der Ausnahme von
manchen "viertelten" Seminaren für Phonologie u. Phonetik) hat jemals
dem deutschsprachigen Otto Normalverbraucher das Vorhandensein
von ... ə und den "Zwischenstufen" zwischen a und ə zur Kenntnis
gebracht und sie a bißl besprochen (e.g. ʌɒɐ̯ sowie ɔɔːoo:). Wobei
jeder ein Selbstlaut für sich ist und keineswegs Abarten von A
und E oder O. Darum auch diese bekloppte Variation, die normalerweise
im Duden per IPA/API nicht transskribiert wird. Für Englisch, eine
noch "chaotischere" Sprache, haben Oxford, Webster, Bantam etc
wenigstens Wort für Wort die phonetische Transskription, entweder
IPA/API oder die eigensinnige ("pig-headed") US-phon.transcription.

Wie erklärt man einem "Anglo", warum etliche Muttersprachler aus
AT und BY (vor allem aus der Oberpfalz) "Des is mei Blooooooooootz"
sagen, wenn es geschrieben steht: "Das ist mein Platz"? Eine
Aussprache, die sogar im sonstigen Bayern und Österreich schon sehr
exotisch ist. :-)

>zum Teil zum
>Diphthong machen (Herr -> Häa).

Yeah, this /hɛə/ is "pan-Deutsch". Almost like English "here" spoken
by a New York native-speaker.

>Und von einer schwäbischen Form weiß ich
>gar nicht, wie man sie beschreiben soll (Bergwerk -> Bʁkwʁk praktisch ohne
>als solchen erkennbaren Vokal).

Boah eh, das ist beinahe Schwizzerisch. :) Aber Obacht: In den
oberdeutschen Mundarten ist die schriftliche Form für Berg, tradi-
tionsgemäß, ;-) ... Perg. Also Pergwerk. Daher auch die bayr.-öst.
Schreibweise Payr, Puch, Pichlmayr, Pachmaier statt mit B-, was
sonst pandeutsch geläufig und bekannt ist.

>Unterschätzt wird auch die stellenweise Kleinflächigkeit der Gebiete. Das
>schwäbische Beispiel gilt sicher nicht für ganz Württemberg, und wenn das
>gerollte [r] gern als „bairisch“ bezeichnet wird, gilt es wohl auch nicht
>für ganz Altbayern (oder nur bis zur Generation vor mir).

Stimmt. Aber das gerollte R ist bei den "Ostschwaben" (also Augsburg &
Co.), dh. im Regierungsbezirk Schwaben von Bayern üblich - im krassen
Gegensatz zum extremen Zäpfchen R der meisten "Schwob'n" von Württemberg
(samt Ulm und Stuttgart). (Das gerollte R steht in einem geographischen
Kontinuum zw. Allgäu/Bayern und den Gebieten jenseits der Alpen-Ketten,
zB. Vorarlberg und der Schweiz. Was in Württemberg, Baden und Elsaß
AFAIK nicht der Fall ist: Da dominiert die Zäpfchenaktivität. :-))

Tim

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Thursday, December 15, 2022 at 7:32:39 AM UTC-5, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> Tue, 13 Dec 2022 10:50:20 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
> <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:

> >Yesterday I listened to a recording by the celebrated baritone
> >Friedrich Schorr of a song cycle by Schumann (I think that was
> >the one from 1928) and recalled the earlier contributions in this
> >thread: _every_ /r/ -- initial, post-consonantal, or final -- is an apical
> >trill -- except for the two in the word "nimmermehr."
>
> This one? From 1938, not 1928.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvWWf99b5Jo

Yes. It's in the new CD reissue of half the "Lieder on Record" set
from 1983 devoted to Schumann and Brahms; the earliest item
is from 1901.

> Sounds artificial too me, Bühnendeutsch.

That was my question. However, it's not heard on any of the
other tracks -- exactly 100 songs plus "historic versions of
Dichterliebe, Frauenliebe, and Liederkreis" that weren't in the
LP set..

> Pronouncing the h in ‘Ruhe’
> is also rather unnatural, nobody does that in normal speech AFAIK.
> Does it have an etymological basis? Are English rest and Dutch rust
> cognates?
> It’s purely orthographical:
> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ruhe#Etymology_2
> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/r%C5%8Dw%C5%8D
> Not related:
> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rust#Etymology_1_2
>
> Caveat auditor: in general, you shouldn’t be using singing to learn
> about the phonology of a language! :)

You really should read an _entire_ message before making
such an inappropriate remark.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Thursday, December 15, 2022 at 9:29:38 AM UTC-5, Tim Lang wrote:
> On 15.12.2022 13:32, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> >Tue, 13 Dec 2022 10:50:20 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
> ><gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:

> >>Yesterday I listened to a recording by the celebrated baritone
> >>Friedrich Schorr of a song cycle by Schumann (I think that was
> >>the one from 1928) and recalled the earlier contributions in this
> >>thread: _every_ /r/ -- initial, post-consonantal, or final -- is an
> >>apical trill -- except for the two in the word "nimmermehr."
> >This one? From 1938, not 1928.
> >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvWWf99b5Jo
> >Sounds artificial too me, Bühnendeutsch.
>
> Yes, Bühnendeutsch, esp. as far as "Ruhe" is concerned. But
> it was both: "modisch" (a typical theater/movie style of that time
> period), and ... East-European kind of Hochdeutsch-German. But in
> the case of this artist, Schorr, in spite of all that, his Hoch-
> deutsch German pronunciation is quite "neutral", Germany-like.

Did you check his bio? he's from (modern-day) Romania, and
it's just barely possible (but unlikely) that his Muttersprache,
or Mamaloshen, was Yiddish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Schorr

(I didn't know he emigrated way back in 1931.)

> The R's are trilled, which is typical of virtually all East-European
> German l. speakers, incl. all native-speakers exclaves. OTOH, the
> uvular R is pronounced only by those who can't trill the R in
> no other language they also speak (e.g. Polish, Russian, Ukrainian,
> Hungarian, Romanian, Croatian/Serbian).
>
> I'm underlining here Shorr's trills by doubling the: -rr-, quoting from
> the lyrics of the song:
>
> "Aus derr Heimat .. Wolken herr ... Aberr Vaterr und Mutterr ...
> dorrt keinerr mehrr ... überr mirr ... keinerrrr ... mehrr herr"
> (In keiner and mehr her he even exaggerates the trilled R, so
> that connoisseurs instantly ask themselves "Polska? Russki?")
>
> (Note the natural positions of the articulating system:
> the trilled R is one "extreme", but the uvular one is already
> kind of "intermediary", the /ʁ/ can be pronounced in various
> ways, among which the almost ... "inaudible" ones. Before
> the German R becomes a ... vowel. In similar circumstances
> as in English, yet German is "conservative" in this respect
> (perhaps as the English was in Shakespeare's time or in earlier
> times).

nimmermehr! Listen to the whole cycle ... by the time it comes
along, it sticks out like a sore tongue -- or maybe he does it for
effect? He was one of the greatest singing actors of his time ...

[Ruud Harmsen]

Thu, 15 Dec 2022 07:16:38 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"

I did, hence the irony, which of course you promptly missed! :)

[Ruud Harmsen via Google Groups <google@rudhar.com>]

On Thursday, December 15, 2022 at 3:56:12 PM UTC+1, Tim Lang wrote:
> Hence, it is weird in Europe to have the prejudice that Japanese and
> Chinese couldn't utter any /r/, replacing it with /l/, when the reality
> shows quite the contrary: Hiroshima, Toshiro, Buntaro & zillions of
> other words containing r's in Japanese, and even in Mandarin: why
> would they transliterate ... "Ren-Min-Bi"? I've never heard or read
> *Hiloshima, Toshilo, Buntalo, neither LenMinBi. :-)

In Japanese, they are allophones of a single phoneme. In Mandarin Chinese
they are two completely different phonemes, the r-like one being retroflex,
so reminiscent of some variaties of the English /r/.

In other Chinese languages or dialects, including those often linked to
Chinese restaurants in Europe (perhaps also the US?) the situation may
be different yet again, which adds to the confusion.

In NL Chinese food came to us via people of Chinese descent in what is
now Indonesia, and many of those did not speak Mandarin Chinese, but
some other variety.

I seem to remember Wikipedia has a very good and very detailed description
of what allophone to expect in what situations in Japanese.

[Ruud Harmsen via Google Groups <google@rudhar.com>]

On Thursday, December 15, 2022 at 6:10:52 PM UTC+1, Ruud Harmsen via Google Groups <goo...@rudhar.com> wrote:
> I seem to remember Wikipedia has a very good and very detailed description
> of what allophone to expect in what situations in Japanese.

Quote:
“Realization of the liquid phoneme /r/ varies greatly depending on environment and dialect. The prototypical and most common pronunciation is an apical tap, either alveolar [ɾ] or postalveolar [ɾ̠].[7][8][5] Utterance-initially and after /N/, the tap is typically articulated in such a way that the tip of the tongue is at first momentarily in light contact with the alveolar ridge before being released rapidly by airflow.[9][8] This sound is described variably as a tap, a "variant of [ɾ]", "a kind of weak plosive",[9] and "an affricate with short friction, [d̠ɹ̝̆]".[5] The apical alveolar or postalveolar lateral approximant [l] is a common variant in all conditions,[5] particularly utterance-initially[9] and before /i, j/.[7] According to Akamatsu (1997), utterance-initially and intervocalically (that is, except after /N/), the lateral variant is better described as a tap [ɺ] rather than an approximant.[9][10] The retroflex lateral approximant [ɭ] is also found before /i, j/.[7] In Tokyo's Shitamachi dialect, the alveolar trill [r] is a variant marked with vulgarity.[7] Other reported variants include the alveolar approximant [ɹ],[5] the alveolar stop [d], the retroflex flap [ɽ], the lateral fricative [ɮ],[7] and the retroflex stop [ɖ].[11]”

[Dingbat]

On Thursday, December 15, 2022 at 9:13:10 AM UTC-8, Ruud Harmsen via Google Groups <goo...@rudhar.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, December 15, 2022 at 6:10:52 PM UTC+1, Ruud Harmsen via Google Groups <goo...@rudhar.com> wrote:
> > I seem to remember Wikipedia has a very good and very detailed description
> > of what allophone to expect in what situations in Japanese.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology

> Quote:
> “Realization of the liquid phoneme /r/ varies greatly depending on environment and dialect. The prototypical and most common pronunciation is an apical tap, either alveolar [ɾ] or postalveolar [ɾ̠].[7][8][5] Utterance-initially and after /N/, the tap is typically articulated in such a way that the tip of the tongue is at first momentarily in light contact with the alveolar ridge before being released rapidly by airflow.[9][8] This sound is described variably as a tap, a "variant of [ɾ]", "a kind of weak plosive",[9] and "an affricate with short friction, [d̠ɹ̝̆]".[5] The apical alveolar or postalveolar lateral approximant [l] is a common variant in all conditions,[5] particularly utterance-initially[9] and before /i, j/.[7] According to Akamatsu (1997), utterance-initially and intervocalically (that is, except after /N/), the lateral variant is better described as a tap [ɺ] rather than an approximant.[9][10] The retroflex lateral approximant [ɭ] is also found before /i, j/.[7]

That looks strange since retroflex and palatal don't seem homoorganic. Perhaps
further qualification is called for. In Malayali English, [ɭ] can occur before [j] but
only in some contexts; it occurs in BULLION but not in MILLION.

[Tim Lang]

On 15.12.2022 16:30, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>Did you check his bio? he's from (modern-day) Romania, and
>it's just barely possible (but unlikely) that his Muttersprache,
>or Mamaloshen, was Yiddish.

This explains why his German is so good - much better than that you'd
expect if he would have learnt it in Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland.
I assumed he must have been e.g. from Galicia or neighboring Bukovina,
where Jews once learnt excellent German within the Austrian school
system. (Hence, too, the quite numerous Bukovina Jews who are deemed
among the best poets and prose writers in the German literature of
the 20th century.)

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Schorr

But his being born in Oradea/Nagyvárad/Grosswardein (near today's
border HU-RO) is a surprise. Because Hungarian-speaking Jews of
Transylvania, Hungary, Northern Yugoslavia and Slovakia have always
had a terrible "broad" Hungarian accent. But he doesn't have no
Hungarian influence whatsoever in his pronunciation. Only the
trilled R, which here and there is a bit exaggerated, but which
was then, in that epoch, OK, and this especially in singing those
old-fashioned "Lieder".

Yet his spending that time, as a young man, in learning singing
in Vienna, Berlin et al., ie, in the real German-speaking world
must have been for him the best training, ie, adaption to the German
pronunciations practised in the German-speaking countries. (Which
has been esp. for the latest 3-4 hundred years in an extreme
contrast to the German pronunciations by those whose mother tongue
is Hungarian.)

>nimmermehr! Listen to the whole cycle ... by the time it comes
>along, it sticks out like a sore tongue -- or maybe he does it for
>effect?

In which song? I had a rapid look at the text of every song, not
findind "nimmer mehr". (Isn't that the translation of "nevermore"
in the poem by Ed. A. Poe? :))

In the 1st song, the last line says: "Und keiner kennt mich mehr hier."
("And nobody knows me here any longer.")

Here "keiner" and "hier" contain very strong trilled Rs, typical of
outside of Germany and Austria, which one hears in Switzerland and
Eastern Europe. Yet the "mehr" in this line has a week R, with
low audibility, in stark contrast to the neighboring "keiner" and
"hier".

But otherwise his pronunciation (although not of someone with the
skills of a singer, incl. hazzan; he sounds like a 80-90 years old
guy, and typical of his era) is very good; and for someone who
grew up in Oradea, in the Hungarian language environment there, his
German is outstanding, commendable, or in Hungarian of his time
"kitünő eminens".)

For instance his pronunciation of "lange" (here in the sense of
"long time") in the 3rd line of the 1st song lyrics is especially
good and typical of Germany and the high style of Hochdeutsch.
Which native speakers of Eastern Europe never pronounce the -ng-
so accurately, /ŋ/, unless the person is a graduate one in German
linguistics and proper diction. Especially those whose 1st language
is e.g. Hungarian, Polish, Romanian etc., and I assume Yiddish as
well, won't be able to pronounce "lange" this way. Unless a teacher
insisted in teaching them how to pronounce the /ŋ/ and telling
his/her students this sound is very important in good German, too
(ie, not only in ... English). ;-)

There are many other aspects that show he payd attention to the
way how certain words are to be pronounced "at home" in Germany
and Austria. (To a much lesser extent in Switzerland and Luxembourg,
though, because the good style German types there have many
phon. idiosincrasies that shockingly differ from those in Vienna,
Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg. And this is why in most cases
even if the Swiss learn 100% the typical features of the pronunc.
in Germany and Austria, one instantly knows that those persons
are from Switzerland: they've got different speaking "melodies".
But the Swiss also have "talents", people who can imitate Vienese
or Berlin accents, and even the natives over there don't detect
that someone from Switzerland is talking to them. But this is
rather a "rara avis".)

He was one of the greatest singing actors of his time ...

I've never heard of him, but I've heard of Josef Schmidt.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYxlrIdRPIA>

His r is also trilled, but his accent is a wee bit closer to what
was typical in the phonetics as well as the singing business
in Austria and Germany in the 10s-20s-30s.
(The endings -ich /iç/, though, are under the influence of Mid-German
grouping of regional dialects (which include areas such as Cologne,
Frankfurt/Main, Berlin, Leipzig); ie, not typical of Austria. But
Austrian German was the kind of German that influenced the way that
Jews along with the German communities of Bukovina spoke German, and
without any Hungarian influence. Since Bukovina was from the early
18th c. until 1918 an Austrian province, where (Austrian) German
was the "lingua franca". And which was the standard language for
the Jews there, esp. for intellectuals, whereas Yiddish was the
dialect spoken "at home" and in the "schtetl", the same way as
for Germans, whose dialect was more or less Austrian-Bavarian,
unless they immigrated from other areas, such as Suebia or Silezia.
Schmidt was born and raised in the area of the city of Chernovitz,
today Cernivtsy, where there ain't almost no German and Yiddish
speakers any longer. Even Romanian-speakers and Polish-speakers
have disappeared. Only Ukrainian and Russian is spoken by today's
population over there.)

Tim

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Thursday, December 15, 2022 at 12:00:42 PM UTC-5, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> Thu, 15 Dec 2022 07:16:38 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
> <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:
> >On Thursday, December 15, 2022 at 7:32:39 AM UTC-5, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> >> Tue, 13 Dec 2022 10:50:20 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
> >> <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:

> >> >Yesterday I listened to a recording by the celebrated baritone
> >> >Friedrich Schorr of a song cycle by Schumann (I think that was
> >> >the one from 1928) and recalled the earlier contributions in this
> >> >thread: _every_ /r/ -- initial, post-consonantal, or final -- is an apical
> >> >trill -- except for the two in the word "nimmermehr."

> >> Sounds artificial too me, Bühnendeutsch.
> >That was my question.

> >> Caveat auditor: in general, you shouldn’t be using singing to learn
> >> about the phonology of a language! :)
> >You really should read an _entire_ message before making
> >such an inappropriate remark.
>
> I did, hence the irony, which of course you promptly missed! :)

Then how did you manage to miss

[Tim Lang]

On 15.12.2022 18:10, Ruud Harmsen wrote:

>In Japanese, they are allophones of a single phoneme. In Mandarin Chinese
>they are two completely different phonemes, the r-like one being retroflex,
>so reminiscent of some variaties of the English /r/.

Yes, I know that kind of R, but I don't know how it is called;
neither the API/IPA sign/letter for that. And I know how it
differs from some similar R's in English, Turkish and the Czech
languages. All these types of R have some "remnants" of a ... /ʒ/.

>In other Chinese languages or dialects, including those often linked to
>Chinese restaurants in Europe (perhaps also the US?) the situation may
>be different yet again, which adds to the confusion.
>
>In NL Chinese food came to us via people of Chinese descent in what is
>now Indonesia, and many of those did not speak Mandarin Chinese, but
>some other variety.

And from Hong Kong/"FouZhou" as well as Macao. Or the former German
colony of Tsing-tao/Djing-dao.

>I seem to remember Wikipedia has a very good and very detailed description
>of what allophone to expect in what situations in Japanese.

I myself almost always expect a very good (best) quality in Wiki in
describing various sounds, inclunding whole lot of ones non extant
in European languages. (But IMHO, the IPA/API system is the best
thing that linguists have invented for everyone's benefit, in order
to get an impression, already in the written form, how a pronunciation
might sound. Because the common spellings, both in transcriptions
such as Pinyin and the prior one, and such spellings like for Irish
Gaelic and even for Brazilian Portuguese seem to me the consummate
chaos. Compared to them, spellings such as for Hungarian, Turkish
and Serbian-Croatian seem to be the epitome of phonetic transcriptions!
"What you see is what you get". :-))

Tim

[Peter T. Daniels]

I can't say -- it's a budget CD box that doesn't include texts, but his
diction is so amazing that I could follow every word. (I don't know
the Eichendorff Liederkreis nearly so well as the other two cycles.)

I'll get out the Met Wagner Broadcast box, which includes everything
except Parsifal from his era. I had been paying attention mostly to
Melchior, who was their biggest star. (There was in fact only one Saturday
afternoon Parsifal during the whole period that's covered -- for years
they did it on all and only Good Fridays -- and the Parsifal broadcast
was the day after Melchior had done a different opera, so maybe
even he of the brass lungs was deemed inappropriate for a "definitive"
collection.)

> In the 1st song, the last line says: "Und keiner kennt mich mehr hier."
> ("And nobody knows me here any longer.")
>
> Here "keiner" and "hier" contain very strong trilled Rs, typical of
> outside of Germany and Austria, which one hears in Switzerland and
> Eastern Europe. Yet the "mehr" in this line has a week R, with
> low audibility, in stark contrast to the neighboring "keiner" and
> "hier".
>
> But otherwise his pronunciation (although not of someone with the
> skills of a singer, incl. hazzan; he sounds like a 80-90 years old

I don't think so at all -- and he was doing Wotan and Sachs for five
more years. They may have banned "German opera" during WWI,
but not during WWII.

> guy, and typical of his era) is very good; and for someone who
> grew up in Oradea, in the Hungarian language environment there, his
> German is outstanding, commendable, or in Hungarian of his time
> "kitünő eminens".)

Would the son of the rabbi be associating with Hungarian children?
Earlier this year I worked on Charles Bliss (né Karl Blitz) who devised
"Semantography" as a refugee in Shanghai,, who came from the very
easternmost city in the A-H Empire, Czernowitz, Bukovina, now just
over the Romanian border in Ukraine; German was his home language
and his parents were careful never to speak Yiddish in front of him.

> For instance his pronunciation of "lange" (here in the sense of
> "long time") in the 3rd line of the 1st song lyrics is especially
> good and typical of Germany and the high style of Hochdeutsch.
> Which native speakers of Eastern Europe never pronounce the -ng-
> so accurately, /ŋ/, unless the person is a graduate one in German
> linguistics and proper diction. Especially those whose 1st language
> is e.g. Hungarian, Polish, Romanian etc., and I assume Yiddish as
> well, won't be able to pronounce "lange" this way. Unless a teacher
> insisted in teaching them how to pronounce the /ŋ/ and telling
> his/her students this sound is very important in good German, too
> (ie, not only in ... English). ;-)

When you were little you knew people who were his age (my
grandmother's two older sisters were born in the 1880s [all
three of them in Brooklyn]), so remember them in your mind's
ear ...

> There are many other aspects that show he payd attention to the
> way how certain words are to be pronounced "at home" in Germany
> and Austria. (To a much lesser extent in Switzerland and Luxembourg,
> though, because the good style German types there have many
> phon. idiosincrasies that shockingly differ from those in Vienna,
> Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg. And this is why in most cases
> even if the Swiss learn 100% the typical features of the pronunc.
> in Germany and Austria, one instantly knows that those persons
> are from Switzerland: they've got different speaking "melodies".
> But the Swiss also have "talents", people who can imitate Vienese
> or Berlin accents, and even the natives over there don't detect
> that someone from Switzerland is talking to them. But this is
> rather a "rara avis".)
>
> > He was one of the greatest singing actors of his time ...
>
> I've never heard of him, but I've heard of Josef Schmidt.
>
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYxlrIdRPIA>

New to me ... very nice! But a generation younger, and, at
least here, a very different sort of singer, suitable for the
operettas of J. Strauss, Lehar, etc.

> His r is also trilled, but his accent is a wee bit closer to what
> was typical in the phonetics as well as the singing business
> in Austria and Germany in the 10s-20s-30s.
> (The endings -ich /iç/, though, are under the influence of Mid-German
> grouping of regional dialects (which include areas such as Cologne,
> Frankfurt/Main, Berlin, Leipzig); ie, not typical of Austria. But
> Austrian German was the kind of German that influenced the way that
> Jews along with the German communities of Bukovina spoke German, and
> without any Hungarian influence. Since Bukovina was from the early
> 18th c. until 1918 an Austrian province, where (Austrian) German
> was the "lingua franca". And which was the standard language for
> the Jews there, esp. for intellectuals, whereas Yiddish was the
> dialect spoken "at home" and in the "schtetl", the same way as
> for Germans, whose dialect was more or less Austrian-Bavarian,
> unless they immigrated from other areas, such as Suebia or Silezia.
> Schmidt was born and raised in the area of the city of Chernovitz,
> today Cernivtsy, where there ain't almost no German and Yiddish
> speakers any longer. Even Romanian-speakers and Polish-speakers
> have disappeared. Only Ukrainian and Russian is spoken by today's
> population over there.)

Maybe both Schmidt's and Bliss's parents would have been in
Schorr's congregation, if they were observant.

[Ruud Harmsen via Google Groups <google@rudhar.com>]

So you really don’t understand, even after my explanation. Well, ..,.

[Ruud Harmsen via Google Groups <google@rudhar.com>]

On Thursday, December 15, 2022 at 7:45:00 PM UTC+1, Tim Lang wrote:
> I myself almost always expect a very good (best) quality in Wiki in
> describing various sounds, inclunding whole lot of ones non extant
> in European languages. (But IMHO, the IPA/API system is the best
> thing that linguists have invented for everyone's benefit, in order
> to get an impression, already in the written form, how a pronunciation
> might sound. Because the common spellings, both in transcriptions
> such as Pinyin and the prior one, and such spellings like for Irish
> Gaelic and even for Brazilian Portuguese seem to me the consummate
> chaos.

All of the four you mention are in fact quite systematic.

[Tim Lang]

On 15.12.2022 20:09, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>I can't say -- it's a budget CD box that doesn't include texts, but his
>diction is so amazing

Did you hear him say "nimma mea" or "nimmərrr meeeeehrr"?

>that I could follow every word.

Well, this is a must, a requirement, that every actor and/or opera
and operette singer learn the proper = clear pronunciation in Hoch-
deutsch. Something that in "modern times" (for the latest five decades
or so) more and more has been neglected (in most languages).

>I don't think so at all -- and he was doing Wotan and Sachs for five
>more years. They may have banned "German opera" during WWI,
>but not during WWII.

That what I mentioned here has nothing to to with those aspects,
but with the quality of his voice (of an old man) as well as
with his quite "old-fashioned" (and East European) way of
pronouncing. (Even his most dangerous foes, Hitler and several
others, had similar "manerisms", along with exaggerated trilled
R's, as if they would've been on ... stage. Remember: Hitler
himself was an afficionado of Richard Wagner's operas.)

The whole "configuration"/"system" was a "complex" containing
innumerable tiny aspects, characteristics, manerisms that were
highly popular btw, say, 1850-1960, but which gradually have
vanished to considerable extents. So, that to contemporary
native-speakers many an aspect is ... weird, eerie, "exotic" etc.
Only the dialects (ie, the real German language.....es, as opposed
to Hochdeutsch/High German, which is an ... artificial German)
don't differ too much from their older variants (of the 50s, of
the 30s and of earlier times, for which, fortunately, there
are many recordings, on discs and in movie footages).

>Would the son of the rabbi be associating with Hungarian children?

Of course! The Jewry of Oradea, Sathmar etc have spoken (for at least
the latest 60-80 years) vernacular everyday's Hungarian as their 1st
language. Younger generations (starting with people born around
1910-1920) in most cases didn't even speak Yiddish. I even heard
"Sathmarer" kharedim (in clothes and caps and/or hats) talking to
one another only in perfect colloquial Hungarian. E.g. during
flights to America or flying back to Europe (with UA or KLM). And
when some still speaks some Yiddish or German, they have that
typical broad Hungarian pronunciation.

>Earlier this year I worked on Charles Bliss (né Karl Blitz) who devised
>"Semantography" as a refugee in Shanghai,, who came from the very
>easternmost city in the A-H Empire, Czernowitz, Bukovina, now just
>over the Romanian border in Ukraine; German was his home language
>and his parents were careful never to speak Yiddish in front of him.

That's true of most of the once big community there: that area was
until later times (30s-40s) one of the best German-speaking areas,
even surpassing native speakers of the kind of the so-called
Transylvanian Saxons as well as the so-called Banate Suebians
(who in fact also speak various regional dialect kinds of German
and learn Hochdeutsch in school, but never learn the phonetics
of Germany and Austria, but the trilled and very "dry" type of
pronunciation, which is heavily and ostensibly influenced by the
phonology of Romanian, Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian. The Bukovina
German and German Jews there, at least those attending courses of
High School and College had a German at least very close to Austrian
Hochdeutsch. So much so, that some Jewish writers, philosophers etc
who lived in other areas, such as the Bulgarian writer Elias Canetti
or the Hungarian Jewish philosopher Manès Sperber, or even the
famous Hungarian physicist and father of the H-bomb, Edward Teller,
spoke good Hochdeutsch with slight, "natural", Austrian accents
(whenever I saw them in talk-shows, on Austrian and West-German TV
channels). Which is amazing for persons who had the possibility to
get into Austrian environments only as grown-ups. To such extent
was the Austrian German for certain generations even after the
collapse of the empire in 1918. This wasn't the case any longer
starting with the generation of their own children and, of course,
grandchildren. Whose German almost always has been that of "foreigner".
(The exceptions are extremely rare and mostly those of ... professional
actors working as theater, TV and movie actors in Germany, Austria
and Switzerland.)

>When you were little you knew people who were his age (my
>grandmother's two older sisters were born in the 1880s [all
>three of them in Brooklyn]), so remember them in your mind's
>ear ...

Me too.

>New to me ... very nice! But a generation younger, and, at
>least here, a very different sort of singer, suitable for the
>operettas of J. Strauss, Lehar, etc.

Yes, indeed. And because of this much more known to the fans
throughout the German-speaking world, both to Jews and to Goyim.
(I assume that as a hazzan the petite Schmidt was a more energetic
singer than Shorr, perhaps with a more powerful "loudspeaker".)

>Maybe both Schmidt's and Bliss's parents would have been in
>Schorr's congregation, if they were observant.

They must have been, since both of them were cantors/hazzans in
their synagogues, in Oradea and Chernovitz respectively. I for
one have never heard that a Christian Church singer would sing
in a synagogue, too.

Tim

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Thursday, December 15, 2022 at 4:30:55 PM UTC-5, Tim Lang wrote:
> On 15.12.2022 20:09, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> >I can't say -- it's a budget CD box that doesn't include texts, but his
> >diction is so amazing
>
> Did you hear him say "nimma mea" or "nimmərrr meeeeehrr"?

It was the only word that didn't have trilled r's -- it had the normal
modern inverted-a sound (twice).

> >that I could follow every word.
>
> Well, this is a must, a requirement,

I guess you're not all that familiar with Lieder-singing! (You called
it "old-fashioned songs.")

> that every actor and/or opera
> and operette singer learn the proper = clear pronunciation in Hoch-
> deutsch. Something that in "modern times" (for the latest five decades
> or so) more and more has been neglected (in most languages).
>
> >I don't think so at all -- and he was doing Wotan and Sachs for five
> >more years. They may have banned "German opera" during WWI,
> >but not during WWII.
>
> That what I mentioned here has nothing to to with those aspects,
> but with the quality of his voice (of an old man) as well as
> with his quite "old-fashioned" (and East European) way of
> pronouncing. (Even his most dangerous foes, Hitler and several
> others, had similar "manerisms", along with exaggerated trilled
> R's, as if they would've been on ... stage. Remember: Hitler
> himself was an afficionado of Richard Wagner's operas.)

Interesting. (Not the Wagner part, we know far too much about
Bayreuth.) I can never understand what he's yelling when I hear
a bit of a newsreel.

Yet the Yale Classicist and McLuhanite Eric Havelock writes (in
*The Muse Learns to Write*) of being part of crowds in Toronto
listening raptly to the broadcasts of his speeches.

> The whole "configuration"/"system" was a "complex" containing
> innumerable tiny aspects, characteristics, manerisms that were
> highly popular btw, say, 1850-1960, but which gradually have
> vanished to considerable extents. So, that to contemporary
> native-speakers many an aspect is ... weird, eerie, "exotic" etc.

The last three tracks in the set are Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's
first Lied recording and what must be nearly the first ones by
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Victoria de Los Angeles, all from
1950-51. They shaped the genre for the next forty years.

> Only the dialects (ie, the real German language.....es, as opposed
> to Hochdeutsch/High German, which is an ... artificial German)
> don't differ too much from their older variants (of the 50s, of
> the 30s and of earlier times, for which, fortunately, there
> are many recordings, on discs and in movie footages).
>
> >Would the son of the rabbi be associating with Hungarian children?
>
> Of course! The Jewry of Oradea, Sathmar etc have spoken (for at least
> the latest 60-80 years) vernacular everyday's Hungarian as their 1st
> language. Younger generations (starting with people born around
> 1910-1920) in most cases didn't even speak Yiddish. I even heard
> "Sathmarer" kharedim (in clothes and caps and/or hats) talking to
> one another only in perfect colloquial Hungarian. E.g. during
> flights to America or flying back to Europe (with UA or KLM). And
> when some still speaks some Yiddish or German, they have that
> typical broad Hungarian pronunciation.

Schorr is earlier than that.

(Is Oradea [Schorr] near Czernowitz [Schmidt and Bliss]?)

[Tim Lang]

On 15.12.2022 23:12, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>>Did you hear him say "nimma mea" or "nimmərrr meeeeehrr"?
>
>It was the only word that didn't have trilled r's -- it had the normal
>modern inverted-a sound (twice).

So you hear him say "nimma mea". In the approximative diletante
transcriptions for some German dialects, esp. for Bavarian. Or, acc.
to IPA /'nɪmmə mɛə/ or /'nɪmmɒ mɛɒ/ or /'nɪmmɐ̯ mɛɐ̯/.

An example found on the net (2 sec search), in a poem by the Austrian
poet Ernst Jandl (1925-2000)

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Jandl>

here: <https://www.ernstjandl.com/gedichte/oh_i_hobs_ja.pdf>

starting: "Oh, i hob's ja net gwusst[,]"
"dos[s] i di nimma mea se[h]n wea"

(High German: "ich hab's ja nicht gewußt, daß ich dich nimmer mehr
sehen werde".)

>I guess you're not all that familiar with Lieder-singing! (You called
>it "old-fashioned songs.")

I am familiar (esp. since I am located in Germany). But, indeed,
I ain't fond of this musical genre. I'd rather listen to some
opera, which I don't like either, except e.g. belcanto such as
by Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi and of course Mozart, who was an
"Italian" musician through and through despite his being a
"Kraut" (a pseudo-Austrian of Suebian extraction, with ancestors
and kinship in the Augsburg area).

I don't refer to his musical skills as well as his voice
quality, as a professional singer, I only referred to his
pronunciation in his German, which is too good for someone
who grew up in Oradea/Nagyvárad. Because I thought you gave
this example in order to show some pronunciation examples,
and not to show us your being fond of this German "Lieder"
singing genre.

>Interesting. (Not the Wagner part, we know far too much about
>Bayreuth.) I can never understand what he's yelling when I hear
>a bit of a newsreel.

Because that was within a general international fad - of
declamative discourses, of histrionic, hyteric, gestures,
exaggerated, yelled, speeches. And too many (esp. from the
"lower classes") really liked such "orators", whose talk
and gestures are ludicrous to later generations.

But by and large, exaggerated show-business-like ways of
presenting stuff in discourses are en vogue, too. Very
different styles, but (unfortunately) impressing the
masses with scaryingly similar effects. For instance your
Trump and that half of the population (around 150m) who
are convinced this fella were a great leader and his
initiatives and way of interpreting what's going on in
the US and the world was OK. Other means, techniques,
other rhetoric habits, but almost the same effects
within the frightening effect of stultifying vast majorities.
And elites of such nations meanwhile just sitting there,
twiddling thumbs and laughing. As though the hole "shit"
were some (childish) game.

The vast majorities of masses don't give a darn on
no-nonsense discourse scientifically presenting reality
and making rational proposals as to how to solve real
problems that destroy populations in the world. The
majorities don't like "low-key" rational "talking
heads", they like choleric idiotic "energetic" clowns
with the gift of the gab, who ... "entertain" them
(remember 2,000 years ago: "panem et circenses").

BTW: compare, though, Hitler's yelled speeches and
his gestures (for which he much trained himself in
front of a mirror: there are several snapshots made
by his photographer in the 20s) with those of his
"teacher", Benito Mussolini: the grimasses and
the speech exaggerations of the Italian (who whenever
came to Germany had his discourses in German too,
since he spoke German fluently; he had been a Socialist
leader in the former Austrian-Hungarian empire). With
the difference that, aside from his disgusting
clownesque shows, Mussolini had a better gift of
the gab in Italian, he was a better rhetor than
Hitler, but as silly a clown as Mr. Trump, yet with
even more exaggerated gestures and grimasses. Look up
some footage fragments hosted by YouTube).

>The last three tracks in the set are Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's
>first Lied recording and what must be nearly the first ones by

DFD very popular (discs, radio, TV) in the 50s 60s 70s.

But if you understand some German and you are anyway a fan of
this genre, then look at this parody by the German comedian
Hape (Hans-Peter) Kerkeling (from the Ruhr region), in which
his mockery is a devastating criticism of the whole fuss around
the "Lieder" realm of opera-like music in the German world
and especially of those who pretend relishing those "tidbits"
of songs.

"Hurz!" (1991)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ7jbQJXF68>

(Kerkeling belongs to the German majority of uvular-R speakers,
which is typical of his native region.)

>Schorr is earlier than that.

He was the generation of my grandparents and of the collectivity
of people of their era (incl. whole lotta men who were as
servicemen in the 1st world war).

>(Is Oradea [Schorr] near Czernowitz [Schmidt and Bliss]?)

No. But the Oradea and Sathmar (etc) Jewry mostly came from
Galicia, Bukovina, Ukraine and Eastern Poland in the 2nd
half of the 19th century. And later waves of immigrants
(fearing the USSR or becoming fed up with that tyranny).
So, most of them had been influenced by Austria (and many
of the territories where they were at home had belonged
until 1918 to Austria). In other words: they weren't influenced,
say, by Berlin and the kingdom of Prussia (or only to a
negligible extent).

Tim

[Tim Lang]

PS:

It is not clear whether the singer grew up in Oradea.
According to de.Wiki, his father was the chief cantor
of the Vienna synagogue. This implies that the family
must have moved earlier, during his childhood, to
Vienna. And then all his musical studies started in
Austria proper and continued, incl. his debut, in
the German-speaking countries. So, I assume that
they were German and Yiddish speaking persons not
at all adapted in the other "galaxy" of the city
of Oradea/Nagyvárad, where most of the then Jewry
was Magyarized and where the usual daily vernacular
was the Hungarian language. Simply put: "another world".
Whereas moving to Austria or Germany, esp. to Vienna
or Berlin, was also for the entire Yiddishkeit Jewry
of East Europe like movingh from Albany or Buffalo to
NYC. (Linguistically and culturally.)

This would explain 100% why his German pronunciation
is so good, lacking any Hungarian traces in it. And
a wee tad even better than that of Josef Schmidt
(who has some curious "inflexions" here and there,
which one hardly find in the pronunciation of
natives-speakers from various areas of Austria and
Germany). But if Schorr was already in Vienna when
he way, say 7 or 10 or 15 years old, then the
assumption that he got a better training for the
gab than Schmidt who stayed in Chernovitz until his
adulthood (Chernovitz being kinda diaspora German
spot), then every detail might be staying in a
logical "ensemble". (The same applies to many a
German native-speakers who had the chances because
of various causes to stay in the US when they
were children and teenies, going there to school etc,
before coming back to Germany or Austria. Some of
them becoming TV and movie actors, but even as
old people being in command of an English
sounding like perfect American English, ie, totally
lacking those German idiosyincrasies because of which
Germans cannot pronounce English spellings such as
z, j, (d)ge/(d)gi, ey as well as voiced stops
(e.g. B, D, G) in the "Auslaut" position. But those
who grew up there can.

Tim

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Friday, December 16, 2022 at 4:33:08 AM UTC-5, Tim Lang wrote:

> But if you understand some German and you are anyway a fan of
> this genre, then look at this parody by the German comedian
> Hape (Hans-Peter) Kerkeling (from the Ruhr region), in which
> his mockery is a devastating criticism of the whole fuss around
> the "Lieder" realm of opera-like music in the German world
> and especially of those who pretend relishing those "tidbits"
> of songs.
>
> "Hurz!" (1991)
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ7jbQJXF68>
>
> (Kerkeling belongs to the German majority of uvular-R speakers,
> which is typical of his native region.)

Our equivalent is Anna Russell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ_D2cE8_eE

(I can't find the one where she celebrates the Lieder singer with
perfect technique and no voice. I think I asked her when she
signed my LP whether she was talking about Schwarzkopf --
sounded just like her -- but she wouldn't say.)

But she's best known for her summary of the Ring:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM33rgC2Fek

(There seems to be a stage version in three videos.)

In the Met's Wagner broadcast box, incidentally, Schorr is only
in Siegfried and Goetterdaemmerung.

[Ruud Harmsen]

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 07:35:15 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:

>On Friday, December 16, 2022 at 4:33:08 AM UTC-5, Tim Lang wrote:
>
>> But if you understand some German and you are anyway a fan of
>> this genre, then look at this parody by the German comedian
>> Hape (Hans-Peter) Kerkeling (from the Ruhr region), in which
>> his mockery is a devastating criticism of the whole fuss around
>> the "Lieder" realm of opera-like music in the German world
>> and especially of those who pretend relishing those "tidbits"
>> of songs.
>>
>> "Hurz!" (1991)
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ7jbQJXF68>
>>
>> (Kerkeling belongs to the German majority of uvular-R speakers,
>> which is typical of his native region.)
>
>Our equivalent is Anna Russell.
>
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ_D2cE8_eE

Quite funny, actually.
In a posh, old-fashioned RP.

>(I can't find the one where she celebrates the Lieder singer with
>perfect technique and no voice. I think I asked her when she
>signed my LP whether she was talking about Schwarzkopf --
>sounded just like her -- but she wouldn't say.)
>
>But she's best known for her summary of the Ring:
>
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM33rgC2Fek
>
>(There seems to be a stage version in three videos.)
>
>In the Met's Wagner broadcast box, incidentally, Schorr is only
>in Siegfried and Goetterdaemmerung.

[Tim Lang]

On 16.12.2022 16:35, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>Our equivalent is Anna Russell.

Fine. Indeed, she was funny.

OTOH, unfortunately, the German parody by the comedian Kerkeling
in the YT version is only a short excerpt out of that comedy show
31 years ago.

I realized this after my posting only. There are several other
YT-links there, but all of them to the same excerpt. I can't find the
full version. The abridged version doesn't contain important
hillarious moments of the parody.

Tim