Re: Droppin' D's Revisited

On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, Barry Garcia wrote:

>>Isn't that the common pronunciation in Spanish? :)
>
>Not quite. The d sound intervocalically and finally in the Spanish I hear
>a lot, seems to still be holding on (even though it's fairly faint, and
>even when I pronounce it, it's faint as well). I do a complete drop.
>Perhaps peninsular Spanish it's dropped, but for Latin American Spanish
>(Mexican at least) it seems to still be there.
>>
Depends on the region of Spain. Catalan, of course, doesn't have -d
(ciuta', etc. I don't remember how past ppls are made off hand);
Andalusian also drops -d (amao, ciuda). Central Spain, of course
retains it (TiuDaD, amaDo).

>Since my mom works at a school, she says when they teach the kids how to
>read, they call the vowels hard or soft.
That's almost as bad as long and short (we already have hard and soft
cees and gees), in my opinion; though it _is_ better than long and
short by a goodly way. Why not just say that English has x number of
distinct vowels and lay to rest the myth of 5 long and 5 short vowels
a la Latin. If Latinate case distinction (an hedgehog, of an hedgehog,
to an hedgehog, on an hedgehog, with an hedgehog, etc.) doesn't work;
then certainly [ej]="long a" / [a]="short a" is equally ridiculous.
Perhaps they could be called off-glide or plain? Something like that.

Padraic.