Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994 09:16:14 -0500
From: debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UIUC.EDU
Subject: Re: etaoin shrdlu
Wayne Glowka say,
I was once told by an English major from Chile that Chilean comedians
imitate the sounds of English (without using any English at all) by endless
repetition of fricatives, especially /s/. She did not specify which vowels
should go between the s's. Notably, she did not get the joke when someone
in class (me) imitated Spanish by making a lot of /k/ and trilled /r/
sounds; however, we were on common ground with a honking nasal imitation of
French.
My friend Lucy Moreira, a romance linguist who just left Urbana to teach at
UGA, came back from Athens last month after house-hunting and did an
imitation of a southern accent that, despite her own Brazilian phones, was
both quite recognizable and not unlike my own feeble attempts to reproduce
one.
Of course she also found out that anyone with a Hispanic accent trying to
rent in Athens is just plain out of luck. In the end she had to have
someone else rent for her. Welcome to America.
dennis
--
Dennis Baron debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu
Department of English 217-333-2392
University of Illinois fax: 217-333-4321
608 South Wright Street
Urbana, Illinois 61801