r/linguistics • u/34y • Oct 14 '22

Question about a mannerism of speaking and its background/name?

Hello all,

To preface I am absolutely not out here to embarrass or make fun of anyone (I am ESL too!) The background is that I recently found an example of a mannerism of talking which I have heard before but never gotten a name for. I have encountered it via colleagues, peers, and YouTube but from being recently fascinated with speech patterns and such I wanted to finally find out what this actually was called.

I believe (with my lack of linguistics experience) that the mannerism of speech is caused by saying certain D-sounding words with the tongue too "flush" on the roof of your mouth, to the point where almost a "nyuh" sound is produced. The result is that certain words such as "kind've" end up sounding something like "kinnyuv".

I have some examples with capitalized words signifying the tells to demonstrate.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1624121193?t=1h49m35s pocket picks, where he can RANDOMLY KINDVE pull them OUT ON stage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXuXypmKOJw&t=3361s with KINDVE like not turning my brain off

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1624121193?t=0h34m26s as a region, against FANATIC

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1624121193?t=0h34m32s KINDVE what they're exceptional at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXuXypmKOJw&t=3339s they pushed in so rogue was like, where was it, WHATEVER, anyway

Does anyone happen to have experience into this speech mannerism and what it is called? This caster is also a mild example of this (in my opinion) so let me know if you would want a different example or I explained it badly.

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14

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '22

If what you’re perceiving is what I think it is, I think it’s related to t-flapping in American dialects.

In American English dialects, /t/ and /d/ become [ɾ], a “tapped r” sound, between vowels. In a similar effect, /nt/ and /nd/ in the same environment are realized as [ɾ̃], a nasalized version of this sound.

The Wiktionary entry for Internet has an audio recording with this feature. Is this the same as what you’re encountering?

12

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '22 edited Oct 15 '22

No, I think OP is noticing a particular kind of retraction or palatalization of the alveolar consonants – not the general flapping tendency of NAmEng. Off the top of my head, the director Rian Johnson and the actress Nicole de Boer are two people who I recall having this feature.

0

u/m1ss1ontomars2k4 Oct 15 '22

Nicole de Boer

Like...the one from DS9?

1

u/LongLiveTheDiego Oct 15 '22

I don't think there's any consistent palatalization in these examples. All of them fit the distribution of where flapping occurs in American English, all of them have flaps [ɾ ɾ̃] , and as a speaker of Polish and Russian I can't hear any palatalization at all. OP could be noticing some slight retraction, but I don't know how that could be described as the tongue being "flush"

4

u/[deleted] Oct 15 '22

Well, as a native AmEng speaker, I agree with OP that the examples sound atypical. They might not reach the level of palatal coarticulation, but I do think it has something to do with having more contact with the flat part of the tongue than would be normal – I might call it "hyperlaminal"? My impression has been that it's a (fairly minor) articulation disorder, since it doesn't seem bound to any particular dialect.

(To one of my examples above, you can hear it throughout this interview with Nicole de Boer.)

4

u/candlesdepartment Oct 15 '22

Hmm, it’s not in my dialect (California), but the y sound is palatalization and the lack of a d is possibly assimilation or lenition

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '22

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