Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Phonetics Lessons with Homer Simpson

Having previously posted about words that the television show The Simpsons has contributed to our lexicon I was thrilled to see a link on Fritinancy to an article about the Simpsons greatest language contribution. What I found most interesting in the article is the following:

"In the French version of the show Homer actually says 'T'oh!', instead of "D"oh!". This is because the French actor who dubs Homer"s voice misread the word the first time he played the role and has never got round to correcting himself."

I guess the actor must have been losing his voice that day.


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In phonetics /t/ is the voiceless counterpart of /d/.

Click here for more about voicing.

2 comments:

Faldone said...

Is initial T aspirated in French? I know it isn't normally in Spanish.

Laura Payne said...

Faldone - Good Question. I had to look this one up.

According to http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/pronunciation/ -

"The French t is also unaspirated (or at least, not strongly aspirated). In other words, it is more similar to the English t in stack than the t in tack (again, if you're a native speaker of English, say these words with your hand in front of your mouth and feel the difference)."

In English, voiceless stops are aspirated stressed syllable initially, thus the /t/ in tack is aspirated and the /t/ in stack is not.

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