Talk:Fis phenomenon

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I find that southern people have this problem too. If you repeat phonetically what they just said "your Prod?" they'll say "no, my PRAHHHD" meaning 'pride'. They still recognize the 'correct' way to speak even though none of them do it.

It's not a matter of "correct" there. They know that you don't have a Southern accent, and that the sound you're making ("prod") does not correspond in your accent to the idea they're communicating.
You might find it surprising, but people who speak with an accept that you consider "incorrect", are just as aware and intelligent about language as you are. --FOo 17:58, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Good on you! Fight the prescriptivists!
One thing though; I thought David Crystal observed the fis phenomenon, not Berko and Brown?


"This shows that although the child could not produce the phoneme /ʃ/, he could perceive it as being different from the phoneme /s/. This has important implications for the acquisition of phonology. In short, it means that children have more, not fewer, phonological processes (or rules) applying in their speech than adults, and that part of the task of acquiring a language is figuring out which processes to allow to apply and which to suppress."

Can someone elaborate on exactly what is meant by this, or clarify it? Adults can still distinguish the difference between 'fis' and 'fish', so I don't see how it show that children have more rules at work. Gzabers 06:28, 31 July 2007 (UTC)