Oldal 45 [45]
THE SOUND SYSTEMS OF ENGLISH AND HUNGARIAN
an effect on the preceding one), while in English it is normally progressive; cf.
szab — szabtam vs. rob — robbed and top — topped. However, regressive assimila¬
tion in English may occur across word boundaries: of course, use your eyes, did
you, etc.
3.4 LETTER-TO-SOUND CORRESPONDENCES
The difficulty of acquiring a good English pronunciation is enhanced by the
irregularities of English spelling. There are certain rules, or rather tendencies
for letter-to-sound correspondences (see Nädasdy 2006, Koväcs-Siptär 1991
and Kovacs-—Siptar 2010), yet English pronunciation depends, to a large extent,
on lexical knowledge: you simply have to know how a certain word is pro¬
nounced. It is not enough to know how to articulate the vowels /e/ and /z/: you
have to know which one is used in a particular word, e.g., in the word any.
Stress is very important for pronunciation: if you know where the stress is in
a word, you can guess its pronunciation — but stress is not marked in spelling.
Vowel alternations (reduction of full vowels) depend on stress.
3.5 SUPRASEGMENTAL FEATURES
Perhaps even more important than the articulation of individual sounds is the
difference in the suprasegmental features of English and Hungarian. English
stress is difficult to predict and is influenced by suffixes. In many words it is
stress that decides whether it is used as a verb or a noun: import, export, in¬
crease, decrease, etc. (See Koväcs-Siptär 1991). There are degrees of stress
which influence vowel quality and rhythm. In phrases and sentences there is
a tendency towards late stress: Compare:
a fan,tastic ex perience — ’fantasztikus élmény
I’m not ‚well today. — Ma nem vagyok jól.
A very important component of pronunciation is rhythm. Hungarian is
syllable-timed, i.e. every syllable takes about the same amount of time to pro¬
duce. English is stress-timed, i.e. strong, stressed syllables occur at regular
intervals, and there is roughly the same amount of time between strong syl¬
lables, while the vowels in weak syllables are reduced. Consequently, the more
weak syllables there are between two stressed ones, the more rapidly they are
spoken. As a result, function words in English have strong and weak forms.
From among the many differences between English and Hungarian intona¬
tion here we shall mention only one. English yes-no questions have a falling
intonation, while Hungarian tends to use a rise:
Are you coming tomorrow? — Holnap eljössz?
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