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sife hiven
Hi,
I wonder how a non-native speaker would be looked on in London/N.Y. or elsewhere in Britain/ USA if he/she spoke this way (sife hiven). Thank you.
You mean someone who pronounced "safe haven" as "sife hiven"? I'm not sure exactly what pronunciation that's intended to represent. Could you write in X-SAMPA?
"Sife hiven" would be the stereotypical faux-netic way to represent the pronunciation of "safe haven" in a London accent. In reality, the London area pronunciation would be something like ["s{If "h{Ivn=] or ["s6If "h6Ivn=]. How would they be "looked upon"? This pronunciation (and the Estuary dialect, in which it's found) is very common in southern England, and I don't think it would be highly stigmatized in modern-day Britain.
Thanks, Lazar,
It was the Australian leader, I've only heard this kind of accent from him. So his ancestors must have come from southern England.
No, that pronunciation is essentially universal in Australia. (I had gotten the impression that Australia was beyond the scope of your original question, so that's why I didn't mention it.) Nearly all Australians would pronounce it that way, whether their ancestors came from England, Ireland, Greece, or anywhere else.
<<No, that pronunciation is essentially universal in Australia. (I had gotten the impression that Australia was beyond the scope of your original question, so that's why I didn't mention it.) Nearly all Australians would pronounce it that way, whether their ancestors came from England, Ireland, Greece, or anywhere else.>>
Yes, but the ancestors of Australian English are "uneducated" urban dialects, basically Cockney. Hence "sife hiven" and the like. This diphtong shift is a characteristic feature of Cockney, and to a certain extent that of Estuary. However, the EE diphtong is somewhere between RP /ei/ and Cockney /ai/, so, the difference between the "standard" diphtong and the EE diphtong is not that conspicuous. Besides, it depends on the individual: sometimes it is quite easy to tell whether the speaker of EE speaks an upper or a lower class variety as his/her native dialect. Some upper class people adopt EE in order to "fit in" and be accepted by "ordinary" people. I think this is a well-known fact, and this "inverted snobbery" has been discussed ad nauseam in newspapers, dissertations and even in this forum. This happens the other way round, too, which is not very often mentioned. There are people with working-class background (and accent of course) who has to adopt some sort of a standard variety (grammar and pronunciation) to stand a better chance of getting a good (in this case white-collar) job. For example, I know people who speak originally Cockney at home and near-RP at school and workplace. They are mainly first / second generation intelligentsia of working-class ancestry. Most of them can't or rather don't want to speak perfect RP, so they end up speaking Estuary. I don't know, though, how people would react if a foreigner started to speak like that. Again, it depends on the individual, namely, how broad foreign accent the person has etc. I don't think a foreigner's accent is perceived the same way as that of a native speaker. I mean, the slighter your foreign accent is, the more likely you are to be judged upon your accent. Oh no...Once again. That's not clear enough... :-) So, if you speak with a thick foreign accent no-one cares which dialect you are trying to emulate, be it a prestigeous or a stigmatised one. The actual variety is overshadowed by your native accent. But if you have a near-native proficiency (and accent) it is easier to decide which variety you speak (stigmatised or not), and people could make judgements on your accent easily. However, I don't think it's a problem in London. You can hear a lot of immigrants mixing Cockney with their native accents.
I hope you can make out what I intended to say in my previous post despite its unclarity, crappy punctuation and bad spelling. And I'm writing this down as though it were a novelty to anyone who has ever read my posts in this forum.
The spelling "sife hiven" actually suggests Brummie (or a similar West Midlands accent) more to me than Cockney or Estuary English. The British Library's English Accents and Dialects collection tends to transcribe Birmingham FACE as [{i] or [ai], e.g. this speaker:
http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/personalisation/object.cfm?uid=021MMC900S18603U00004C01
There are similarities between the Brummie accent and that of the Cockney - at least the original Cockney, as that is now changing quite a lot for various reasons (Estuarisation and immigration being some of them). The Brummie accent has always been a bit of a joke really for people outside the Birmingham, Black Country, West Midlands region- easy to mock, and comedians often do just that. Not fair I know, but it's just the way it sounds - it's as if Brummie speakers are a sandwich or two short of a picnic, when in actual fact they may well have sky high IQs.
I liked the way that lady pronounced "dangers" - "dine-juss". And Coventry sounded like "Cov-un-troy". So typical of Brummie and as I say - easy to mock. Sorry, Birmingham! :-) Even so I prefer it to Glaswegian and that's just down the road!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38T0BF2WAHk&mode=related&search=
Ricky Gervais (real) David Brent meets a spoof Peter Crouch (unreal) and an even spoofier (even more unreal) Wayne Rooney for a bit of the action. Only the real Crouchy would sigh "sife hiven" |