# Minorities' language and pronounciation/intonation



## Ant67

I have always been fascinated by the fact that some minorities speak their language with a strong accent or intonation peculiar of the majority's' language. Some examples which come to my mind follow: please note that I have not been all over the places mentioned and some of my observations have been made by listening to radio streamings on the internet, etc. Also not being a native I may or not be correct in some evaluations, so forgive me if I'm wrong.
- In Lusatia, Sorbs tend to pronounce the "r" phoneme extremely rolled. This seems a feature of German to me, not a Slavic one! Moreover the "ł" tends to be pronounciated like a "w", whereas I think its sound should be similar to Polish "ł". Then there is the typical German intonation, which is clearly noticeable.
- Corse people also tend to pronounce their "r" extremely rolled, à-la-française
- The Slovene speaking minority in Italy have a distinct intonation which is typical of the Trieste dialect, not of standard Slovene.
In some cases, though, this doesn't happen. A typical example is the South Tyrolean German-speaking minority in Italy, which does not have a hint of Italian intonation or accent when speaking, be it their dialect in colloquial speech or standart German in formal speech. On the other hand, Germans in Hungary do have a hint of Hungarian accent or at least intonation when speaking German. So it's not necessary a matter of how "big" or powerful the minority language is in contrast to the majority one.
I would like to hear other forumers' observations, experiences, etc.


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## vince

Euskera has the same five vowels as Spanish


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## ronanpoirier

The Italian and German speaking minorities in Rio Grande do Sul tend to speak those languages with a gaúcho intonation.


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## jaxlarus

If I got your question right, you're talking about the native speakers of the same language who grew up surrounded by a different language speaking majority. You're not talking about, say, German as spoken in Franken, Berlin, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Austria, are you?

Well, I believe it's only natural, isn't it? I mean most of them (if not all) got educated primarily in the majority's language, even though they are native speakers of the minority language, and they use the majority language in their everyday communication with the majority.

I noticed what you're talking about with the Armenians in Cyprus. I work in an Armenian school where I encountered Armenians from Cyprus, Greece, Lebanon, Syria, Armenia and Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).

I'm not even fluent in Armenian but I did notice a change in the intonation of the Armenians descending from these regions, mainly grouped in three:


 Cypriot and Greek Armenians
 Levant Armenians (Lebanon and Syria)
 Mainland and Artsakh Armenians.
Now, having in mind that the first two groups speak and write Western Armenian while the third uses Eastern Armenian, it's very easy to make the distinction between the two, with only an elementary knowledge of the language. I was told by Cypriot Armenians that it's quite difficult even for them to understand the Artsakh Armenians!

Between the first two now (Cypriots and Levantines), yes there is a distinctive way in which they speak the language mostly because of the intonation.

For me, as a native Cypriot it's not difficult to tell between a Cypriot Armenian and one from mainland Greece, again due to the Cypriot Armenians' "Cypriot-like" intonation. 

I haven't met any Turkish Armenians or Armenians living in, say, France or Argentina, but I suppose they'd be easy to...spot!

 Cheers!


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## tom_in_bahia

Mexican heritage native English speakers in the southwest are able to both produce the English interdental and the Spanish trilled r to create combinations with words like "three" and "throw" (where the theta would be a native English speaker's and the trill-r would be a native Spanish speaker's - both together...not easy!)

I think that *calques* factor into this a lot as well, aside from intonation.

For example, I've known completely bilingual English-Spanish speakers from Arizona who would say things like "I was dreaming with you last night. (soñar con vs. to dream of). Another example is also borrowing, such as the Chicano English usage of "watchear" My grandmother, as an Italian immigrant to the United States would often say "close the lights" as opposed to turn off the lights (I imagine "chiudere le luci" was the influence here.) and this ended up sticking with my dad and his sisters.

I've noticed in my own speech that Brazilian Portuguese and intonation is slightly affecting my English when I speak. For example, listing items or options.

In English I would say: You could rest on the sand, go swimming or eat fried fish. (where the underlined words show a lowering in my intonation, denoting the options).
In Portuguese one would say: Pode deitar na areia, nadar, comer peixe frito... (*notice the absense of an "or". The intonation here follows a different pattern where the underlined words seem to trail off to a higher point [I see in my mind like an ondulation] almost leaving the listener anticipating more options, even if there aren't any). (To the moderator:) My point here his that I've only been here for about 2 years and I've noticed that I will casually go into this sort of intonation over the phone with friends and family in the United States, among other calques which are too sudden to remember now. If this can happen to me after two years, imagine someone who was born into a diglossic situation - it must be much stronger and much more tenacious.


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## vince

jaxlarus said:


> If I got your question right, you're talking about the native speakers of the same language who grew up surrounded by a different language speaking majority. You're not talking about, say, German as spoken in Franken, Berlin, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Austria, are you?




Québécois's vowels are highly diphthongized, like English and unlike French.


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## jaxlarus

vince said:


> Québécois's vowels are highly diphthongized, like English and unlike French.



Well, I wouldn't know where to start, if I wanted to make a list of the differences between Greek spoken on Cyprus and the standard mainland Greek... But I don't think that that's what Ant67 had in mind.


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## vince

^^Quebec is surrounded by American English speakers, my point is that they are a linguistic minority in North America. Is Greek really a linguistic minority on Cyprus?


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## jaxlarus

vince said:


> Is Greek really a linguistic minority on Cyprus?



Nope... It's supposed to be one of the two official languages (80% of the population) of the Republic, the other being Turkish (18%). But the fact is that Greek Cypriots don't really speak standard Greek except in 'official' contexts (school, media, parliament) and you can very easily spot a Cypriot by his accent and intonation, even when he does use the standard Greek.

This goes for the Turkish Cypriots as well, Turkish being a minority language on Cyprus. Their syntax and intonation is heavily infected by Greek as spoken on Cyprus.

See Cypriot Greek, Cypriot Turkish, Gibrizlica, Gibreiga.


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