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From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: singing and speaking
In-Reply-To: Avi Jacobson's message of Thu, 05 Dec 1996 10:23:20 +0200
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References: <32A28B5B.279C@netvision.net.il> <584i9b$59t@agate.berkeley.edu>
	<32A68678.5221@netvision.net.il>
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 18:48:27 GMT
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In article <32A68678.5221@netvision.net.il> Avi Jacobson
<avi_jaco@netvision.net.il> writes:

>Third, many singers learn their repertoire from recordings, and become expert
>at mimicking the pronunciations on the recording.  But when they have to
>generate new utterances in that accent, they fail.

At least within opera, there are formal classes in how to pronounce the various
languages needed, though not in how to speak them (by which I mean "generate
new, meaningful utterances).  I am familiar with this because my father is a
professor of opera at Northwestern Unviersity; I even tutored one of his grad
students in Spanish pronunciations for a recital she planned.  (Some songs of
Mexico, some of Andalusia, and some from Madrid--oy.)

The most difficult part was breaking some habits from other languages in which
she was already trained.  Getting her to pronounce "yo" as one syllable rather
than two (Italian interference) took the longest, surprisingly.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
