English questions

[Travis B.]

I also have this pronunciation, oddly enough.

For me both spinach and sandwich have this pronunciation, with [ɘːtʃ] reflecting underlying /ədʒ/. Pronouncing them with [ɘʔtʃ] reflecting underlying /ətʃ/ feels like spelling pronunciation to me.

Yes, I have it for sandwich too.

This implies that these pronunciations are inherited rather than local innovations, unless both NAE and AusE innovated both of the pronunciations independent of one another, which seems unlikely to me.

[bradrn]

For me both spinach and sandwich have this pronunciation, with [ɘːtʃ] reflecting underlying /ədʒ/. Pronouncing them with [ɘʔtʃ] reflecting underlying /ətʃ/ feels like spelling pronunciation to me.

Yes, I have it for sandwich too.

This implies that these pronunciations are inherited rather than local innovations, unless both NAE and AusE innovated both of the pronunciations independent of one another, which seems unlikely to me.

My idiolect is more South African than Australian, though either way your point stands

[Moose-tache]

Not necessarily an inheritance. Plenty of features, like t-flapping, rhotic-dropping, and vowel-elision, have occurred independently in various dialects. Voicing a consonant after a reduced vowel doesn't seem that weird to me as independent innovations. It just means reducing the amount of meaningful work you're doing in an undstressed syllable by not changing what your vocal folds are doing across the syllable. Similarly, if it were devoicing of vowels in this scenario, I would also not be surprised to see it pop up in multiple places independently.

[bradrn]

Not necessarily an inheritance. Plenty of features, like t-flapping, rhotic-dropping, and vowel-elision, have occurred independently in various dialects. Voicing a consonant after a reduced vowel doesn't seem that weird to me as independent innovations. It just means reducing the amount of meaningful work you're doing in an undstressed syllable by not changing what your vocal folds are doing across the syllable. Similarly, if it were devoicing of vowels in this scenario, I would also not be surprised to see it pop up in multiple places independently.

On the other hand, word-final devoicing of obstruents seems more common, especially in Germanic.

[vlad]

The pronunciation of "spinach" with /dʒ/ is inherited. Voiceless and voiced variants of this word exist in Middle English, Old French, Arabic and Persian.

Can't speak for "sandwich", though "Greenwich" can also have /dʒ/.

rhotic-dropping

Is rhotic-dropping really independent?

[Travis B.]

Not necessarily an inheritance. Plenty of features, like t-flapping, rhotic-dropping, and vowel-elision, have occurred independently in various dialects. Voicing a consonant after a reduced vowel doesn't seem that weird to me as independent innovations. It just means reducing the amount of meaningful work you're doing in an undstressed syllable by not changing what your vocal folds are doing across the syllable. Similarly, if it were devoicing of vowels in this scenario, I would also not be surprised to see it pop up in multiple places independently.

On the other hand, word-final devoicing of obstruents seems more common, especially in Germanic.

Voicing here seems to be inherited because in the English here devoicing is layered on top of voicing, i.e. the underlying form is lenis while the surface consonant is devoiced, with its lenis-ness being indicated through vowel length and a lack of preglottalization.

[Richard W]

Not to mentions Norwich, Ipswich and Harwich.

[Travis B.]

Not to mentions Norwich, Ipswich and Harwich.

Those placenames have no native pronunciation in my lect, unlike Greenwich, which is famous enough here to have /dʒ/.

[Moose-tache]

Is rhotic-dropping really independent?

What's the alternative? Individual American dialects coming from individual British dialects independtly of one another, then retroactively changing the sandhi rules? And then adopting a bunch of common features to give the illusion of sharing an 18th century common origin? Then messing with the sound changes to give the ilusion that those common changes predate arhoticism? No, I think it's far more likely that arhoticism has developed more than once.

[vlad]

Is rhotic-dropping really independent?

What's the alternative? Individual American dialects coming from individual British dialects independtly of one another, then retroactively changing the sandhi rules? And then adopting a bunch of common features to give the illusion of sharing an 18th century common origin? Then messing with the sound changes to give the ilusion that those common changes predate arhoticism? No, I think it's far more likely that arhoticism has developed more than once.

Which features/changes are you talking about?

[Travis B.]

As far as I am aware, the typical theory (which I am sure you are aware of) on rhoticism versus non-rhoticism in NAE is simply that rhoticism arrived in the Americas first, before it had spread in England, and then later immigrants from England brought their new non-rhoticism (which had spread by that point within England) with them to the US, but rhotic pronunciation had already spread westwards by that point - which fits the fact that the historical distribution of non-rhoticism in the US was that it was primarily limited to the eastern seaboard. Later, in the twentieth century, rhoticism spread within the US due to its gaining greater prestige (particularly after WW2), and has largely replaced non-rhoticism in the US except in the case of AAVE, where non-rhoticism largely persists.

[bradrn]

As far as I am aware, the typical theory (which I am sure you are aware of) on rhoticism versus non-rhoticism in NAE is simply that rhoticism arrived in the Americas first, before it had spread in England […]

I always thought rhoticism was simply the ancestral state of English? Middle English was uniformly rhotic, to my understanding.

[Travis B.]

As far as I am aware, the typical theory (which I am sure you are aware of) on rhoticism versus non-rhoticism in NAE is simply that rhoticism arrived in the Americas first, before it had spread in England […]

I always thought rhoticism was simply the ancestral state of English? Middle English was uniformly rhotic, to my understanding.

That is precisely true. And it was this ancestral rhoticism was brought to the Americas before non-rhoticism started to take hold in England.

[Man in Space]

I think Inland North has another example of terminal-schwa-to-/i/ hypercorrection: For kielbasa I (and others, including “Big Chuck” Schodowski, a longtime TV presenter) have [k_h@'bAsi], as in Schodowski’s character “The Kielbasy [sic] Kid”. Anybody else have this?

It’s all the more baffling because we’re up to our ears in Slavs (particularly Poles [like me] and Ukrainians) up here, so you’d expect maybe they’d keep the original pronunciation.

[Travis B.]

I think Inland North has another example of terminal-schwa-to-/i/ hypercorrection: For kielbasa I (and others, including “Big Chuck” Schodowski, a longtime TV presenter) have [k_h@'bAsi], as in Schodowski’s character “The Kielbasy [sic] Kid”. Anybody else have this?

It’s all the more baffling because we’re up to our ears in Slavs (particularly Poles [like me] and Ukrainians) up here, so you’d expect maybe they’d keep the original pronunciation.

The pronunciation I am familiar with here in the Milwaukee area is /kilˈbɑsə/ [cʰɪːɯ̯ˈbasə(ː)] for kielbasa. On the other hand, replacing final /ə/ with /i/ is nearly universal with German names ending in -e here. (Medial /ə/ is maintained as such in German names here though.)

[Travis B.]

I think Inland North has another example of terminal-schwa-to-/i/ hypercorrection: For kielbasa I (and others, including “Big Chuck” Schodowski, a longtime TV presenter) have [k_h@'bAsi], as in Schodowski’s character “The Kielbasy [sic] Kid”. Anybody else have this?

It’s all the more baffling because we’re up to our ears in Slavs (particularly Poles [like me] and Ukrainians) up here, so you’d expect maybe they’d keep the original pronunciation.

The pronunciation I am familiar with here in the Milwaukee area is /kilˈbɑsə/ [cʰɪːɯ̯ˈbasə(ː)] for kielbasa. On the other hand, replacing final /ə/ with /i/ is nearly universal with German names ending in -e here. (Medial /ə/ is maintained as such in German names here though.)

(I should note that normally, final -a maps to /ə/ here, except in bologna.)

[Man in Space]

I think Inland North has another example of terminal-schwa-to-/i/ hypercorrection: For kielbasa I (and others, including “Big Chuck” Schodowski, a longtime TV presenter) have [k_h@'bAsi], as in Schodowski’s character “The Kielbasy [sic] Kid”. Anybody else have this?

It’s all the more baffling because we’re up to our ears in Slavs (particularly Poles [like me] and Ukrainians) up here, so you’d expect maybe they’d keep the original pronunciation.

The pronunciation I am familiar with here in the Milwaukee area is /kilˈbɑsə/ [cʰɪːɯ̯ˈbasə(ː)] for kielbasa. On the other hand, replacing final /ə/ with /i/ is nearly universal with German names ending in -e here. (Medial /ə/ is maintained as such in German names here though.)

In the OP (original Polish) it’s something like /k_jEw'basa/ (kiełbasa).

[Travis B.]

I think Inland North has another example of terminal-schwa-to-/i/ hypercorrection: For kielbasa I (and others, including “Big Chuck” Schodowski, a longtime TV presenter) have [k_h@'bAsi], as in Schodowski’s character “The Kielbasy [sic] Kid”. Anybody else have this?

It’s all the more baffling because we’re up to our ears in Slavs (particularly Poles [like me] and Ukrainians) up here, so you’d expect maybe they’d keep the original pronunciation.

The pronunciation I am familiar with here in the Milwaukee area is /kilˈbɑsə/ [cʰɪːɯ̯ˈbasə(ː)] for kielbasa. On the other hand, replacing final /ə/ with /i/ is nearly universal with German names ending in -e here. (Medial /ə/ is maintained as such in German names here though.)

In the OP (original Polish) it’s something like /k_jEw'basa/ (kiełbasa).

People here generally have no idea of what to do with Polish ie - sometimes they map it to /ɛ/ - without patalization - sometimes they map it to /i/. Similarly, they have no clue that Polish ł is really /w/ and map it to /l/ instead; it just turns out, though, that /l/ in the dialect here isn't very much different from /w/ anyways.

[zompist]

Similarly, they have no clue that Polish ł is really /w/

Well, it is now, but it used to be [ɫ], and as late as the 1980s there were still dialects with [ɫ]. Since Polish settlement in the Midwest started over a hundred years ago, I wouldn't assume all immigrants had [w].

[Travis B.]

My favorite example of bad Polish pronunciation here is /ˈpʊntʃki/ [ˈpʰʊ̃(n)ʔtʃci(ː)] for pączki when /ˈpɔntʃki/ [ˈpʰɒ̃(n)ʔtʃci(ː)] would be closer to the original Polish. Can we say hyperforeignism?