What's this phenomenon?

[EvaLindström]

I definitely recognise the hailans/ailans confusion that
Piet Lincoln mentions. I think it tends to be resolved by
rijen (region) being added for the Islands Region. My
impression in New Ireland in the last few years was that
[h] cropped up mainly in emphatic pronounciation, for
instance in one-word translations ([haul] for owl etc).
People are aware that it is somehow important in English
and will put it in here and there -- maybe it sounds
prestigeous; and it might be perceived as a "foreign" sound
(the same way that Swedish speakers overgeneralise [z] and
[dj] in English -- those weird sounds that are supposed to
happen when you speak foreign).

Has anyone else noticed the letter 'z' being pronounced [dz]
(or rather alveolar than dental)? This happened a bit in
NI when people said New Zealand etc. Ultra-foreign sound.

(Btw, [h] is a velar fricative rather than a glottal stop.)

Eva


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Eva Lindström
Linguistics
Stockholm University
http://www.ling.su.se/staff/evali