Chris Croughton wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:18:47 GMT, Miss Elaine Eos
> <Misc@*your-shoes*PlayNaked.com> wrote:
>
>> In article
<1124162829.322243.214690@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>,
>> "compunk" <compunk@chol.com> wrote:
>>> English is not my mother tongue. So I'm confused sometimes with
the
>>> pronunciation.
>>>
>>> In the Enlgish grammar book or the dictionary, the plural 's'
sounds
>>> like 'z' , for exemple in <tearchers, computers, chairs, etc>.
>>>
>>> But actually when I listen to the pronunciation of the native
>>> speakers, they pronounce it like 's', not 'z'.
>>
>> I have never heard anyone do this, native speaker or otherwise.
As
>> you say, the plural 's' is nearly always pronounced as a 'soft s',
>> which sounds like 'z'. I say 'nearly always' because, although I
>> can't think of one, it would not surprise me to learn of an
>> exception or two.
>
> The only people I have heard pronounce plural 's' as an unvoiced
> ('hard') 's' have been Scandinavians (Norwegians and Swedes,
> specifically; I haven't heard enough Finns, but Danes generally
follow
> the German way of pronouncing any single 's' as 'z' and double 's'
as
> a sharp ('hard') 's'). It can be heard in some of Abba's songs,
for
> instance. I don't know of any native English dialect which
pronounces
> it that way.
[...]
More and more Americans are doing it -- often unknown to themselves,
so, I believe, it's still called "the Chicago s". Listen to George W,
for example. Other English speakers, with a few dialectal exceptions,
don't.
--
Mike.
|
|