Say You, Say Me
I'm currently taking a Dialects class, and as I hung around with a linguist back in the 90's, I get to compare what acting teachers say about language-sounds with what I learned from her. The teacher is wonderfully talented (when was the last time you heard somebody jump from Yorkshire to Cockney to Brooklyn to Birmingham, Ala. - in the middle of explaining "Received Pronunciation" (RP)?)

The implicit question in a conversation about accents (not your native language) and dialects (your native language, but the speaker ain't from around here) is "Why do they sound like that?" As in, "Why don't we have that funny throat-clearing ch-sound they have in German?" (Meaning the unvoiced velar fricative [x] - speaking of which, here's an International Phonetic Alphabet-to-Braille translation page...groovy.)

So "why do the fur'ners talk funny" is always in the back of your head in this class. Unfortunately, it sounded like my teacher shortchanged us on the explanation. If I have my notes right, she suggested at some point that RP lacks a certain sound that Standard American English uses "because it's easier to do without it." Huh? Here's my old friend's (wildly paraphrased - it's been years) explanation why that isn't enough of an explanation, and it's an excellent example of a symmetry argument hiding in plain sight:

If something is easier for one group of people, it's easier for every group of people - all else being equal. So if "easier" were the whole explanation, everybody should sound the same by now.

That's it. Hence, if "easier" has anything to do with why two groups of people differ in their pronunciations, it can only mean "easier in context", rather than absolutely easier. But in that case, you haven't explained anything! You've simply substituted the word "easier" for the word "different", and swept the entire history of sound changes under the rug.

Something related to the sound change must have happened - perhaps in another, adjacent sound - to make it easier. It's not enough to say "Oh, Americans palatalize here and here because it's easier" without explaining why Londoners *don't*. Maybe Londoners hold their jaws more closed so they get brighter front vowels, and that supports harder medial consonants, whatever - but there's always a more elaborate and meaningful explanation than "easier".

- posted by Scott @ 6:50 PM