Assimilation

Hi,
I'd like to know more about assimilation in American English. What I am talking about is that feature that turns I can be into I cam be, or one more into wom more.
There is a lot of material on the net that suggests such assimilation is perfectly normal and natural in English... err... I'm afraid British English. The material I found seemed to deal with British English. They said can go turns into cang go, ten cars into teng cars, etc.

Now, I still remember Jim told me not to pronounce tan go the same as tango. So I think I should not pronounce live in Canada the same as living Canada, right?

My opinion is that in American English that doesn't happen, so, even though there is often a difference in perception (you hear something similar to this cam be wrong, gimme wom more, teng cars), there is no difference in production (you keep using the tip of your tongue and you don't replace n's with m's or ng's completely).

Can anyone tell me more on this darn assimilation? (darn because it's giving me trouble, LOL)

Thanks.

Hi Susan, are you American? So you don't say "cang go"...

Susankay

Not sure what Assimilation means. Are you referring to Pidgin or Eubonics?

I am referring to how sounds change because of other sounds that are next to them. One example is "can't you" --> "can chew", or even "attention" --> "attenchun".
But others like the ones I mentioned in my first post only seem to be a feature of British English, but I'm not sure. I don't think Americans say um-believable, even though it might sound pretty much that way.

If someone says "Can-chew" for "can't you," then they are mispronoucing the words!

Perhaps they are from a region of the country that speaks that way. Inner city youth speak very differently than suburban college student.

There are many dialects in the US, based on social class and regions of the country.

I also hear "caunt-yu" and 'kent-cha"

I love to hear the "accents" of my fellow Americans !

The instances you describe (can be -> cam be) is, at least to my knowledge, called alveolar instability or to be more precise de-alveolar assimilation, and it's part of anticipatory coarticulation. However, as you might know, I know more about BrE than AE, so I won't give any examples since all of them are predicated on BrE, sorry. But you might want to google those terms. Who knows, you might find something.

Have you actually heard someone say "teng cars" instead of "ten cars", Kooyeen?  "Cam be" strikes me as weird, too.  Where did you get this from?

Hey Amy,
well... I don't know! You know, I have problems with n's because of my dialect, so it's very difficult to pay attention to natives' speech. It sounds like a minor difference to me, and it's a pain in the back to listen to every minor feature instead of listening to understand the meaning. Also, I listen to too much music, and singers don't pronounce words carefully.
I found several sites that said that kind of assimilation is very common, but they all seemed to be British websites.
Actually, I think I hear something similar from African Americans. Their "man" sometimes sounds like "mang" to me, but I think that N is actually nasalized, as I've heard.

CalifJim

The mastery of these patterns -- if mastery is even needed -- is not to focus on the individual combinations that are theoretically possible, but to imitate a native speaker in a more mindless way.

Hi Jim,
yeah, I think that's what I do, but then I realize I might be doing weird things with my mouth, and so I feel the need to ask someone. I don't think I have big problems in sound production, if I try carefully and consciously. I notice the difference between un-believable and um-believable, when I try to say them, but when I try to "hear" that difference... heh, if it's in fast speech, I might assume it could be either way. The problem seems to become a major problem when I don't think too much about the way I'm pronouncing words, and I end up asking myself... "Is this something I picked up somewhere or is it just me?" - LOL, you know, I think I might "unconsciously" have some features of Canadian rising.

Well, I've been trying to pronounce the N's correctly, and it seems to me I sound better. I really got them all wrong. I realized I said "since" as "sing-s". Now I finally say "prince" basically the same as "prints"!

And thank you all!