Author Topic: emPHAsis (Read 1305 times)

Jonathon · « **on:** July 05, 2006, 12:30:57 PM »

My desk at work is pretty close to the customer service people, and there's one girl who always puts the stress in our company name on the third syllable instead of the second, like everyone else does. It's making want to go home and pull out my phonology textbook to see if I can find out more about English stress patterns.

Gah! Every time she does it I wince. It sounds bizarre and unnatural, and I think there's got to be some sort of linguistic explanation for it.

Porter · « **Reply #1 on:** July 05, 2006, 12:36:33 PM »

English doesn't have well-defined stress patterns, does it? For many words, there is more than one "correct" way to stress the syllables.

In Portugese, there is 1 and only 1 way to pronounce a word, and it can be determined from the spelling. It's remarkably regular, as is the rest of Portugese pronunciation.

Jonathon · « **Reply #2 on:** July 05, 2006, 12:48:41 PM »

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English doesn't have well-defined stress patterns, does it? For many words, there is more than one "correct" way to stress the syllables.

In Portugese, there is 1 and only 1 way to pronounce a word, and it can be determined from the spelling. It's remarkably regular, as is the rest of Portugese pronunciation.

For the most part, English stress is well defined. There is some variation, but most of the examples I can think of are relatively new (like, from the last 50 years) compound words.

I'd also imagine that Portuguese pronunciation isn't quite that simple. Every language has dialects. Even if the dialects are pretty uniform, I know there are some pronunciation differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese.

Jonathon · « **Reply #3 on:** July 05, 2006, 01:28:10 PM »

Aha. Apparently she's treating the name like a free compound ("I live in a white HOUSE") instead of a fixed compound ("I live in the WHITE House"). The fact that she also says "Thank you for calling [company NAME]" with a rising inflection (which is apparently a common feature for young American females) only makes the stress pattern sound that much stranger.

Porter · « **Reply #4 on:** July 05, 2006, 01:34:42 PM »

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I'd also imagine that Portuguese pronunciation isn't quite that simple. Every language has dialects.

Yes, there are many Brazilian dialects, but that doesn't discount what I am trying to say, but apparently lack the vocabulary to say.

My point is that there is almost zero irregularity in how Portugese words are pronounced/spelled. Of course, a word will be pronounced differently by people of different dialects, but anybody who sees the word spelled out knows how to pronounce it.

Maybe I should say that it's the spelling that's extremely regular, not the pronunciation.

But still, you can tell from the spelling of a word exactly how the accent should go. In English, you just have to know how it's pronounced and accented.

Jonathon · « **Reply #5 on:** July 05, 2006, 01:42:16 PM »

Gotcha. So it's a highly phonetic language with better-defined stress patterns than English has. I can accept that (since it's true and all).

Porter · « **Reply #6 on:** July 05, 2006, 01:45:55 PM »

Like I said, I don't have the vocabulary to really discuss this. I don't know if I agree with what you said or not, but from the non-technical definitions of all those terms, I think I do.

Jonathon · « **Reply #7 on:** July 05, 2006, 02:01:40 PM »

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Like I said, I don't have the vocabulary to really discuss this. I don't know if I agree with what you said or not, but from the non-technical definitions of all those terms, I think I do.

I was using the non-technical just for you.

Porter · « **Reply #8 on:** July 05, 2006, 02:20:03 PM »

Oh. I asumed that "highly phonetic language" was a technical term.

Jonathon · « **Reply #9 on:** July 05, 2006, 02:28:55 PM »

Not really. Technically, phonetic means "relating to speech sounds." In common usage, though, it means "spelled the way it sounds."

Porter · « **Reply #10 on:** July 05, 2006, 02:33:00 PM »

I see.