The bulk of our linguistic competency is learned at an early age—normally before we even show signs of having acquired this ability. We listen to pronunciations, intonations and cadences, and use it all to fashion our own way of speaking. As adults, we can watch this process taking place in young children learning to talk. What we don't usually observe is that we begin to form opinions about another person based solely upon the way he or she speaks.
Accents define us in more ways than we care to admit. Usually these preconceptions remain subconscious, only revealed, for example, when we believe someone with a heavier accent less intelligent than ourselves. Other times, the notions are much closer to the surface.
One such highly debated presumption of Italian phonology centers on the misunderstood letter r which is typically pronounced as an alveolar trill in the front of the mouth. However, in some parts of Italy, notably Piedmont and other parts of the northwest near the French border, r is produced as a uvular sound in the back of the mouth. This is known as erre moscia or "soft r" and many Italians have crowned this unfortunate pronunciation wrong, going so far as to say that all those who speak with erre moscia are either snobby or have a speech impediment. Before making such assumptions about erre moscia, we must understand a few simple facts about its background.
The History of R
The letter r has a distinct history in many languages.
In the phonetic table of consonants it hides under the label liquid or approximant, which are just fancy terms for letters halfway between consonants and vowels. In English, it is one of the last sounds to be developed, possibly because children aren't always certain what people are doing to produce the sound. Researcher and linguist Carol Espy-Wilson used an MRI to scan the vocal tract of Americans saying the letter r. In order to produce r, we must constrict our throats and lips, position our tongue and engage the vocal cords, all of which requires a lot of well-timed effort. She discovered that different speakers use different tongue positions, yet exhibit no change in the sound itself. When a person does produce a sound differing from normal r, that person is said to exhibit signs of rhotacism (rotacismo in Italian). Rhotacism, coined from the Greek letter rho for r, is an excessive use or peculiar pronunciation of r.
Why Piedmont?
The phrase "no man is an island" relates just as well to human languages as to human emotions. Despite the efforts of many language purists to prevent influences from other languages entering their own, there is no such thing as an isolated linguistic environment. Wherever two or more languages exist side-by-side, there is the possibility of language contact, which is the borrowing and intermingling of words, accents and grammatical structures. The northwest region of Italy, because of its shared border with France, is in a prime position for infusion and mixing with French. Many of Italy's dialects evolved similarly, each changing differently depending on the language with which it came into contact. As a result, they became almost mutually incomprehensible.
Once any alteration has taken place, it remains within the language and is passed from generation to generation. Linguist Peter W. Jusczyk has conducted research in the field of language acquisition. It is his theory that our capacity to perceive speech directly affects how we learn our native tongue. In his book "The Discovery of Spoken Language" Jusczyk examines a number of studies which demonstrate that from approximately six to eight months of age, infants can distinguish subtle differences in every language. By eight to ten months, they are already losing their universal ability to detect delicate phonetic differences in order to become specialists in their own language. By the time production begins, they are accustomed to certain sounds and will reproduce them in their own speech. It follows that if a child only hears erre moscia, that is how he will pronounce the letter r. While erre moscia occurs in other regions of Italy, those instances are considered deviations whereas in the northwest region erre moscia is perfectly normal.
Accents define us in more ways than we care to admit. Usually these preconceptions remain subconscious, only revealed, for example, when we believe someone with a heavier accent less intelligent than ourselves. Other times, the notions are much closer to the surface.
One such highly debated presumption of Italian phonology centers on the misunderstood letter r which is typically pronounced as an alveolar trill in the front of the mouth. However, in some parts of Italy, notably Piedmont and other parts of the northwest near the French border, r is produced as a uvular sound in the back of the mouth. This is known as erre moscia or "soft r" and many Italians have crowned this unfortunate pronunciation wrong, going so far as to say that all those who speak with erre moscia are either snobby or have a speech impediment. Before making such assumptions about erre moscia, we must understand a few simple facts about its background.
The History of R
The letter r has a distinct history in many languages.
In the phonetic table of consonants it hides under the label liquid or approximant, which are just fancy terms for letters halfway between consonants and vowels. In English, it is one of the last sounds to be developed, possibly because children aren't always certain what people are doing to produce the sound. Researcher and linguist Carol Espy-Wilson used an MRI to scan the vocal tract of Americans saying the letter r. In order to produce r, we must constrict our throats and lips, position our tongue and engage the vocal cords, all of which requires a lot of well-timed effort. She discovered that different speakers use different tongue positions, yet exhibit no change in the sound itself. When a person does produce a sound differing from normal r, that person is said to exhibit signs of rhotacism (rotacismo in Italian). Rhotacism, coined from the Greek letter rho for r, is an excessive use or peculiar pronunciation of r.
Why Piedmont?
The phrase "no man is an island" relates just as well to human languages as to human emotions. Despite the efforts of many language purists to prevent influences from other languages entering their own, there is no such thing as an isolated linguistic environment. Wherever two or more languages exist side-by-side, there is the possibility of language contact, which is the borrowing and intermingling of words, accents and grammatical structures. The northwest region of Italy, because of its shared border with France, is in a prime position for infusion and mixing with French. Many of Italy's dialects evolved similarly, each changing differently depending on the language with which it came into contact. As a result, they became almost mutually incomprehensible.
Once any alteration has taken place, it remains within the language and is passed from generation to generation. Linguist Peter W. Jusczyk has conducted research in the field of language acquisition. It is his theory that our capacity to perceive speech directly affects how we learn our native tongue. In his book "The Discovery of Spoken Language" Jusczyk examines a number of studies which demonstrate that from approximately six to eight months of age, infants can distinguish subtle differences in every language. By eight to ten months, they are already losing their universal ability to detect delicate phonetic differences in order to become specialists in their own language. By the time production begins, they are accustomed to certain sounds and will reproduce them in their own speech. It follows that if a child only hears erre moscia, that is how he will pronounce the letter r. While erre moscia occurs in other regions of Italy, those instances are considered deviations whereas in the northwest region erre moscia is perfectly normal.
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