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Dutch Rhotic Variation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5505 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes  Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 1 of 7 07 July 2010 at 11:22pm | IP Logged |
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I've been dabbling with Dutch and was wondering if Dutch speakers could confirm some things about Dutch /r/.
I was bewildered by all the different /r/'s I heard and was wondering which variant to adopt. I read a study by Renée van Bezooijen from Nijmegen University called Approximant /r/ in Dutch: Routes and feelings which talked about four different /r/ distributions amongst Dutch speakers in the Netherlands: apical = "tongue tip" [r]/[ɾ] (e.g. Spanish) uvular = "throat" [ʁ]/[ʀ] (e.g. standard German) approximant = "bunched" (e.g. English) syllable initial (e.g. waaroom) / syllable coda (e.g. maar) A. tongue tip / tongue tip B. tongue tip / approximant C. uvular / uvular D. uvular / approximant The paper concluded (amongst many other things) that the use of approximant /r/ was rising in the West and spreading from there, and that not only is it not stigmatized, but rather it is actually ranked better in the question Would you like to talk like this yourself? than their non-approximant counterparts. This at least appears to be the case in Limburg, Randstad, Friesland, and Gelderland where the studies took place, with the slight exception of uvular/uvular vs. uvular/approximant in Gelderland and Limburg where the former was ranked a bit better). I apologize for the verbosity, but I didn't want to accidentally misrepresent any of the results. So my question to you, Oh varied Dutch speakers, is: 1. Which variant do you personally use? Do/Did you use more than one? 2. What would you think of a speaker of the other variants? 3. What would you recommend a foreign learner of Dutch, i.e. me, to adopt? 4. Also, if you could shed some light on v vs. f and ch vs. g, it would be appreciated. I have read that the distinction is not normally made in the North, each pair being generalized to the voiceless. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5144 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 2 of 7 08 July 2010 at 3:06am | IP Logged |
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I'm afraid I didn't do very well in my phonology and phonetics course so I don't really know what to make of terms like apical and uvular. If it's comparable to the Spanish r, does that mean that it's quite strongly trilled?
1. Which variant do you personally use? Do/Did you use more than one? I know I use the approximant 'English' r (more often than I'd like) but I try to trill my r as often as I can because I think it sounds nicer. It depends on the position of the r within a consonant. If it's in final position (like the r in 'maar' or the r's in 'deurwaarder') I would use the approximant but in initial position I would trill it but still not as strongly as in Spanish (or French for that matter) so I think that would be a uvular one. 2. What would you think of a speaker of the other variants? I guess you can tell from my wanting to work the approximant r out of my speech wherever I can, I don't much like the sound of other people using it either. It can actually get on my nerves if I have to listen for an extended period of time to someone who never pronounces the r at all. The apical r is I think only really used by the older generation and I adore the sound of it. I associate it with intellectual men in their 60's, reciting their own writing in a slow deep voice littered with beautifully trilled r's. ;-) 3. What would you recommend a foreign learner of Dutch, i.e. me, to adopt? I guess that depends on how much you care about sounding neutral. If you really want to speak standard Dutch I would advise you to use the uvular r as often as you can except in final position or when it's really a struggle to produce the sound (I nearly choke sometimes, trying to pronounce the r when it's in the middle or at the end of a word). This is what most of my friends and me do and we're all from the Holland region where the Dutch spoken is closest to standard Dutch. 4. Also, if you could shed some light on v vs. f and ch vs. g, it would be appreciated. I have read that the distinction is not normally made in the North, each pair being generalized to the voiceless. Before you read this, keep in mind that I'm writing this from a 19-year-old's South Holland-raised point of view and I'm not very familiar with the Dutch spoken outside of the Holland/Brabant region. V is often pronounced as f, especially in rapid speech, but it's more common in dialects spoken by working class people than other social groups. A real Amsterdammer pronounces the word 'duiven' as 'duifuh' while I say 'duivuh. A v at the beginning of a word is sometimes turned into an f in rapid speech as well. I would normally say 'vereniging', 'vaag' and 'vliegen' but in normal speech, especially when I'm talking really fast, they are likely to be turned into 'fereniging', 'faag' and 'fliegen'. As far as I know, ch and g are pronounced exactly the same in every dialect. The Brabant and Flemish regions are known for their 'soft g' (there is still a difference between the two; the Flemish one is a little softer than the Brabant one and there are still variations within the region) and the rest of the Netherlands uses the 'hard g'. Edited by ReneeMona on 08 July 2010 at 3:08am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5505 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 3 of 7 08 July 2010 at 12:01pm | IP Logged |
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ReneeMona, thank you so much for your thorough response.
Unless I'm mistaken, the (initial at least) /r/ you're recommending is in the same place as the Spanish one (using the tongue-tip) but not as strongly trilled. If this is the case, then I must apologize for not making my terminology clearer. In an ironic attempt to be clearer and avoid confusion, I have instead caused it! The uvular /r/ I was referring to is actually further back in the throat and is not done using the tongue-tip. I'm assuming you don't mean this one. Thanks again, I'll do my best to separate those v's and f's. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Galaxy Triglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 5077 days ago 10 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Spanish Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Latin | Message 4 of 7 09 July 2010 at 4:27pm | IP Logged |
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Please excuse me, this is just a quick reply:
1: onset: trilled uvular, medial: (between vowels) uvular voiced fricative, coda: apical approximant. There are many speakers at the moment who speak like me, who never had the trilled apical r to begin with. There are also lots of speakers in particularly the west of the Netherlands who do have the apical trilled r at least in onsets. To me it seems that the Flemish have a totally apical trilled r in all cases, except that it is unvoiced in codas! 2: At the moment in Holland and Belgium, the situation is thus that you can usually understand where someone is from or to which social group someone belongs according to their accent in total, not just their Rs. Of course, different social groups view each other in a different way. 3: Any variant would be fine, depending actually the most of you are perhaps travelling to either Belgium or Holland. Then you could adopt either standard. In Holland almost anything is fine (especially if you are going to have a foreign accent anyway) but please don't voice your trilled r's at the end of words, I've had some problems with some Spanish learners of Dutch with this. Dutch devoices all consonants in the ends of words (exept of course an approximant r, because it's not a full consonant) and if you're going to voice your trilled r's in the end you're going to be very confusing. 4: There is a general trend of losing the voicing distinction in Dutch in Holland. Some dialects have lost the distinction between s vs. z, f vs. v, and g vs. ch. In the nothern Netherlands, the pronounciation of g and ch has become an uvular fricative universally in my opinion. Personally, I've lost the distinction between f vs. v as well like many speakers these days, but I retain s vs. z. let's see how long that lasts... In the southern Netherlands, all these differences remain in most regions as well as in Belgium. Please note that although the voicing distinction is lost, s and f are voiced in between vowels after the change. ch and g remain voiceless between vowels. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| sapien Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5087 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English*, German, Dutch Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 7 10 July 2010 at 9:53am | IP Logged |
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Another dabbler of Dutch here. I have a question about the "uvular" variant. Specifically, how come this is called uvular when the German uvular "r" sounds so different? To me it seems as though the Dutch "g" is articulated in the same place as the German uvular "r" - only without the trill. The Dutch uvular r, in comparison, seems further up the throat, maybe to compensate for how close it would otherwise sound to the "g"? Edited by sapien on 10 July 2010 at 10:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6592 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 6 of 7 10 July 2010 at 10:29am | IP Logged |
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I wish someone would do a youtube video or something on the different r's (which I do have a basic grasp on) and the g/h situation (which I don't get at all). These phonetics terms mean nothing to me.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6081 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 7 of 7 10 July 2010 at 2:29pm | IP Logged |
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHmcVjMzS-I
Not specifically about rhotic dialects, but this is a Youtube on a range of Dutch dialects (though controversially, Frisian is treated here as a Dutch dialect). My German is much better than my Dutch and the only one I understand well is the last one, Kerkraads, which is more or less a Ripuarian dialect and could just as easily be called a German dialect as a Dutch one. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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