Aspiring to pronounce Phelukwayo

 Teachers of foreign languages know that the last thing you do is write down a  word before students have learnt to say it. If they see the spelling before hearing the sound, their first reflex will be to attach to that spelling the phonological characteristics of their mother tongue – in most (if not all: discuss) cases, a pronunciation they're going to have to unlearn.

Which brings me to /p/, which (in most English speech I've met) is aspirated in some contexts (the allophone can be transcribed as [p^h]) but not in other contexts. It's something speakers of English as a mother tongue [henceforth "FLES" for "First-Language English Speakers"] find hard to hear: "  A p is a p, isn't it?". But if they know what to listen for, most FLESs can be taught. 

<experiment>
Wet a finger and hold it in front of your lips as you say "pin". You should detect a little puff of air.

<autobiographical_note>
When I first met this test, when the Cambridge Linguistics Department was a converted cricket pavilion in the early 1970s, no-one suggested wetting the finger. That's my own addition. The water makes the puff of air have a cooling effect, making the finger more sensitive.
</autobiographical_note>

Next say "spin". There's next to no puff of air  (I say "next to no" because the sound of the word involves the passage of air; but aspiration after the [p] is not a contributor).
</experiment>

When a FLES sees "ph" at the beginning of a word, it obviously represents /f/ (as it does in English words). This brings us to Phelukwayo (not an English word). When, in early June 2019 cricket commentators started to meet it most days (he had been in South African teams before then, but June 2019 – the Cricket World Cup in England and Wales – was the moment when it first started to register on my mentions-per-day meter) the English commentators had to learn from the South African ones. Some were quicker than others. For example, in early June Jonathan Agnew was saying /felə'kwejəʊ/ (with the /fel/ of *phel [except that there's no such English word] and the /wey/ of  English "way", but by mid-June he'd learnt. Some of the Test Match Special team have insisted on their Little Englander pronunciation. (No names, no pack-drill, but I bet they voted for Brexit.)

This question of aspiration is something I've dealt with before, here for example:

First World War Tommies, hearing the word blanc (used to refer to a drink of wine – which, in that part of France, was typically white), heard no aspiration after the b and heard p. When they returned home it was just 'wine', which – in 'San Ferry Ann' pronunciation – was 'plonk'. They showed little respect for its precise colour meaning....

Here, also, I mentioned Audrey Hepburn, who (raised in a mixture of Belgium, England, and the Netherlands) did not aspirate her voiceless plosives.

<mea_culpa>
I got it wrong first time around in that post, but fixed it in an update.
</mea_culpa>

It didn't give her a foreign accent, but it probably contributed to the je-ne-sais-quoi that made a viewer of her first screen test say "the kid's got something". It wasn't something that she had, but something that she didn't have – those little puffs of air following p and t and k ("aspirated voiceless plosives").

But aspiration wasn't my first port of call, surmise-wise. As South Africa was involved (and South Africa boasts many of the world's languages that use clicks), I initially went for the more exotic idea of a bilabial click (not unlike the little pop a child makes when imitating his^{(oh yes I did)}/her  mother applying lipstick).

Don't be misled by the Play symbol;
this is just a screenshot.

But this "masterclass" (what qualifies it for that epithet, I wonder –  just that it's from the horse's mouth?) shows that the initial consonant is just an aspirated voiceless plosive: Masterclass-what-masterclass?

That's all for now, Duty calls.

b

Update: 2019.07.01:14.30 – Added PS
When I first  noticed this, and heard the (Anglophone) South African commentators I wondered where their /f/ came from (as their first syllable seemed to be ...

<old_dogs>
That "seemed to be" indicates a certain diffidence here.
</old_dogs>

... /pef/).

I think what's happening is this: English has no phonemic /hl/, but in Phehlukwayo's own pronunciation there is some sort of aspiration before the /l/. As the lips of the speaker are close together after the initial [p^h], this takes the form of /ɸ/ (the voiceless bilabial fricative  used in Greek. In English, the nearest we have to that is /f/ (as in all those words borrowed from Greek, philosophy, for example) so the Anglophone South Africans hear an /f/. (Alternatively, though, they get it right, and I hear it wrong; my ear for this stuff isn't as keen as it once was.)

Let the lave go by me

On Saturday my choir will be singing in All Saints, Wokingham (and it's not too late to get a ticket, from the places listed here:
).

The title of the concert is also the title of a Vaughan Williams setting of poems written by Robert Louis Stevenson.  RVW (as we say in the trade :-)) set it for baritone solo; but our Musical Director has arranged it for SATB choir. "Let the lave go by me" is the request made in the first line of the first (and best-known ) song in  the collection, The Vagabond.

And in view of the efforts the choir has put into articulation, it would be a shame if the word lave passed meaninglessly by.

<glossary subject="lave">
Lave is a word set elsewhere by Vaughan Williams (in the Sea Symphony ?), but there it is a verb, deriving ultimately from the Latin lavare. But in "Let the lave go by me" it is obviously not a verb.  Stevenson's lave is a noun, with this meaning (taken from dictionary.com): 

So "let the lave go by me" means something like "I don't care about anything else".

</glossary>

But his arrangement of this collection is not our MD's only contribution to Saturday's programme. He also wrote the collection of haikus set here:
(Not quite Tintern Abbey, but hey...)

For details of the background to this work, I recommend the programme notes. The haikus were set by Paul Burke, and Saturday's performance will be the premiere of a revised version. Again, the programme for the concert has the details. The composer will be in the audience,  adding to the experience for the choir.

The theme of travel will be common to the rest of the programme. These two more substantial pieces will be accompanied by a number of smaller-scale pieces. I'm particularly looking forward to The Ride of the Valkyries  (arranged for piano duet).

But I'm neglecting the cricket.

b

Update: 2019.07.28.10:20 – Tweaked Tintern Abbey link and added PS:

PS
Having done the Romantic Poets for A-level (British poets only of course, what do you take  me for?), the idea of Tintern Abbey as a place whose genius loci might be contrasted with Didcot Parkway struck me as needing no explanation. But I've now tweaked the Tintern Abbey link so that it takes you straight to the bit about literary associations.

STOP PRESS

Next weekend a substantial fraction (not quite half) of the choir will  be reprising parts of this concert (excluding the Didcot Haikus, and with the addition of – inter alia – a charming Rutter piece) on a brief  ...sally? ...foray?...tourette? ... of the Midlands. If you're in either place, or both, you'd be very welcome: 

Alexa: What is alexia?

People of my vintage, hearing the prompt: "5½ yards?" will unhesitatingly respond "1 rod, pole, or perch" (well, maybe not all of them) , remembering those glossy red exercise books with tables on the back (I never did find out what "Troy weight" was, though I'm pretty sure the number 20 came into it somewhere; ounces in a pound, maybe.) Anyway, this information was hardly crucial to anything very much, and I don't think any less of people who don't have it at their fingertips.

<digression theme="5½ yards">
Although this measurement is not in wide use today, it may be of interest to those of an etymological bent. Another of those numbers on the back cover of 1960s exercise books was "22 yards = 1 chain".

That quantity crops up all over the place: in measurements (10 square chains = 1 acre); in the phrase chain boy (mentioned in a previous post...

But staying with the subject of measurements (the grit at the centre of this ... erm, whatever) someone on  that programme mentioned how memorable measures (resisting metrication) tended to be monosyllabic – foot, inch, yard, and so on. Which brought to mind another such monosyllable –  chain – which was mentioned too. But what wasn't mentioned, on the subject of persistent obsolete technology metaphors, was the surveyor's assistant: chain boy. (The term was current when my brother was one in the 1970s, and a quick Google search confirms that it's still in use [though sometimes, in a diverse workforce, with PC tweezers]).

...); (oh yes, this sentence is still going; it started back at "That quantity..."); in arbitrary measures, such as the length of a cricket pitch...

<sporting_aside>
On a Rugby Union pitch, early in my rugby-playing career, this arbitrary 22 yards thing was avoided. The line about a quarter of the way down the pitch was 25 yards away from the goal line. But the numerological gods were not satisfied: the number 22 ought to crop up arbitrarily in sports fields. Along came metrication to save the day; the "25 yard line", commonly referred to as "the 25", became "the 22 metre line". In fact, 25 yards is very much closer to 23 metres (22.86), but truncation rather than rounding was chosen; I suspect the numerological gods may have been involved.
</sporting_aside>

...(Phew, NOW the sentence is ended.) 

But this digression started out on the subject of 5½. Probably – I haven't checked – the idea of a quarter of 22 yards is the root of the naming of a quarterstaff.

<Hmm>

I have checked now [couldn't resist], and Wikipedia says it's "probably" derived from something else. I'm not convinced.

Per contra,  a fighting implement 5½ yards long  would be pretty unwieldy even for Little John (who was wielding the first quarterstaff I ever met [in a picturebook, about sixty years ago]).

</Hmm>

</digression>

But a recent survey for Mashable (I say "recent" because the Mashable report is recent; the video itself has no datestamp). But the issue of telling the time on an analogue clock has been around for some time. The late lamented Dave Allen had a routine about it which is worth 6'03" of anyone's time. And many other commentators have said that telling the time from an analogue clock is not a crucial skill for a 21st-century child. (It's just struck me that the ability to read an analogue clock is as irrelevant today as, when analogue clocks were invented, the ability to read a sun-dial became – it can be an impressive trick, but that's all.)

It's not crucial; but losing any skill is a shame. And a risk inherent in any new  technology is that it fosters dependence on it. In case of power cuts it's wise  to keep a few candles handy; and a box of matches. (Luckily, when friction matches replaced tinder boxes, power cuts were a thing of the future.)  But how many new boxes of tricks erode our abilities? Since agreeing (reluctantly...

<comparative_linguistics>
I feel the word doesn't have the force of the Spanish a regañadientes, with its implication of gritted teeth.
</comparative_linguistics>

...) to the use of SatNav,  I've noticed a reduction  in the accuracy of my sense of direction (never great).

Which brings us to alexia (see the subject line). It's related (etymologically, at least, though I have no idea whether the two disorders share any part of the same cognitive mechanism) to dyslexia. but a- instead of dys- – so not-at-all rather than mistakenly).  I wonder what Alexa would make of that. And I wonder whether 22nd-century people (provided that homo sapiens's sapience extends to the avoidance of self-annihilation for that long) will have their ability to read – while probably not entirely eradicated – at least attenuated.

Anyway, cricket calls.

b