(1) Glottal Stop. I think I have noticed that North American politicians and diplomats commonly replace the T in Pu(t)in with a Glottal Stop; and degrade the following vowel into a schwa: Pu:en.
Is the Glottal Stop spreading in the US of A? Has it become a mechanism for expressing disapproval?
(2) Automatic Epithets: English news-readers, politicians, and commentators, referring to the present horrible events in the Ukraine, seem invariably to refer to "Putinsillegalwar". Rather like Homer, where Achilles is so often Swiftfooted, podarkes. I have come to resent the prescriptiveness in this. Are these people all experts in International Law? Upon what authority do they attempt to dictate what I am to think? Are they afraid that I may not realise the illegality of the war? Do they think that I, and all the other listeners, are (1) wickedly perverse people who do not acknowledge an obvious 'illegality', or (2) half-witted fools so stupid that we need to be given this vital information many times a day?
During the decades when we were constantly being drawn into Special Military Operations, [I do not believe that 'War' was ever formally and legally declared], especially in the Middle East, I do not recall that our journalists kept referring exempli gratia to Blairsillegalwar or Bushsillegalwar. They just reminded us of all the Weapons Of Mass Destruction which could be unleashed upon us with as little as 40 minutes' warning.
Ah ... those terrible WMDs ... Blessed, O Blessed Blair, thou that didst deliver us from them.
I increasingly feel that modern Wartalk is a conscious imitatio of the studied and crafted praxis of Herr Goebbels.
The effect it's having on me is the opposite of what I fear is intended.
If these noisy and domineering bullies shout their indoctrination at me hour after hour, perhaps, in fact, they are doing so because, er, they're not telling the truth?
I am beginning to wonder.
Meanwhile, ghastly and unjust things are happening.
With respect, I'm not sure you mean a glottal stop (or if you do, it’s not a phenomenon I’ve noticed). Rather, I think that you are hearing a nasally-released stop followed by a syllabic nasal (with no intervening vowel at all, not even a schwa). In the IPA, one might transcribe this as [ˈpudⁿn̩]. Such a pattern is quite common even in British English, in "everyday" pronunciation of a word like "suddenly" [ˈsʌdⁿn̩li], though helped on its way in this instance by the American tendency to make intervocalic "t" (e.g. in "city" or "water") into a voiced sound.
ReplyDeleteIn a NY Times article, William Safire wrote: “We are officially informed by the Kremlin that Vladimir Putin pronounces the u in this name with neither the yew sound nor the u in put or but. If we wanted our spelling to represent accurately the sound of the way Russians pronounce the first syllable of his name, it would be POO-tin or POU-tin. Our mouthing of that last syllable would still be a little off because of what phonologists, the scientists of sounds, call ''the soft t,'' which doesn't exist in our alphabet."
ReplyDeleteAn example of the soft t is in the similar word "beauty", which in the UK is pronounced with a t sound, but in American English more like a d sound, as in this link:
https://www.howtopronounce.com/beauty
Rather than pronounce Putin with a d sound and give the impression that his name is Pudin, or use the UK's soft t which would sound either pompous or foreign, Americans generally substitute a glottal stop, followed by the schwa. There is no implication of disapproval in that pronunciation.
As to the "Putin war" writers' tic, it's no different than the auto-script in stories having to do with the 2020 election, wherein Trump makes "claims without evidence."
ReplyDeleteThe evidence was suppressed by various interested parties. How do I know? I observed a "recount"; under the rules there, no observer of the recount could get close enough to the action to notice a signature mis-match. That, my friend, is "suppression."
For that matter, note that your hangnail and flat tyre are caused by 'climate change.' Yes, I exaggerate. Slightly.
Automatic epithets- would these include 'President Trump's unfounded allegations'? In the old days we always knew that calling something an allegation meant that the newspaper concerned refused to commit itself to the truth or falsity of the assertion. Nowadays it seems that we have to distinguish ordinary allegations from unfounded allegations.
ReplyDeleteIn most US dialects, any unaccented vowel can be assumed to become a schwa at some point in conversation. If a consonant makes this difficult, the consonant will tend to be swallowed or become very quiet (similarly to the u in Japanese desu).
ReplyDeleteI have confidence that people who are not from NYC are shaping that internal T sound with their tongues. You just don't hear it come out very loudly.
One influence on this might be the slang term "poot," to fart. It sounds silly to call a foreign leader Pootin'.
Dear Father. For a laugh, I watch the off brand network (Off Brand is a reference to "The Wire"). Newsmax which has a woman reporter who calls the Ukraine- Russia war "Putin's vanity war."
ReplyDeleteWhy would American broadcasters (who merely echo the establishment's agenda of the moment) dislike Putin after we were assured by Dubya Bush that "I call him Pootie Poot; I have looked into his eyes and gotten a sense of his soul?"
It's a strange time to to be alive
When I was younger, I used to feel bad for the poor Russians because they got their news from the state controlled outlets Izvestia and Pravda whereas I was taught in our public school system (seminaries for the American Faith) that America had a free press and that it was the Fourth Estate that would keep the politicians feet to the fire.
It took me far too long to come to understand that American Journalists are like Russian ones, only with better hair cuts, and they are a joke compared to, say, hair dressers.
Hair dressers must be professional; they have had to complete a course of study; they must be licensed and they are subject to overview by boards which can punish them and remove their license if they have done harm whereas George Stephanopoulos.
The media always refer to the current hostilities as "Putin's Illegal War" because they are peddling a falsehood. It is similar to the way in which any statement made by Donald Trump is always described as a "false claim".
ReplyDeleteWe live in a totalitarian age, one marked by mass psychosis, partisanship, lack of analytical thinking, and a disregard of Christian morality.
A new set of values has replaced our values. The new morality has its own lexicon, in order to achieve the level of social destruction that they want. For example oppression of strangers, bigotry, and prejudice have been replaced by a new delict: "racism". It is impossible to say what racism is, or who might be racist. It is a Trotskyite formulation of which we can all be condemned, unless we consent to endless change.
frjustin: The "soft t" in Russian is unrelated to the American alveolar flap which is the sound you are describing. "Soft", in relation to Slavonic languages, means palatalised, i.e. with a simultaneous "y"-type articulation. The closest equivalent to a palatalised t in English would be the t in "tune" (avoiding a hypercorrected pronunciation which would pronounce the "t" separately from the "y" element). An even better example is the Irish word "poitín" (poteen), which with the exception of the vowel in the first syllable is pretty much exactly how "Putin" is pronounced in Russian.
ReplyDeleteIt is a shame the Rome seems to ignore the Roman Canon on days when it is most appropriate. EP III is always it's default position like in a small parish church.
ReplyDeleteThis is not appropriate.
Wynn: point taken. I was thinking not so much of how Americans (mis)pronounce Russian, as to how the Russian is (mis)pronounced in the US and the UK. Here's a chart:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.speakmethod.com/speakamericant.html
T = D Between Vowel Sounds [as in Putin]
When T is between two vowel sounds (A,E,I,O,U) or between a vowel and L or R these letters are called semi-vowels to linguists), it becomes a D sound. In phonetics, this sound is called a "flap," which means the tongue touches the roof of the mouth quickly.
It should be a soft, light sound. This is the key difference between British and American speech. This rule is widely applicable—you may find a few exceptions, but you will be more surprised by how well the rule works.
Practice with: computer, water, bottle, heater, better, matter, ability, university, put it on, great idea
Say: compuder, wader, bodul, header, beder, mader, abilidy, universidy, pudidon, gread'idea