In episode 8, at around 28:11 of Love My Garden (available in Netflix) the woman in it is talking about how she deals with the death of her daughter and says what appears to me to be ¨you can decide you are going to make good of what you´ve got or you can mullow in it.¨ By context, I would have thought that meant mull over in a negative way. The translator for the Spanish subtitles chose ¨y decidir tomar lo bueno de lo que te toca o regodearse en ello.¨
I have been unable to figure out just what verb this woman from Ulverston, Cumbria, is saying-- every spelling I can think of that it sounds like does not bring up an appropriate verb for me in a search engine. My Spanish dictionary says regodearse means ¨gloat over,¨ ¨take pleasure in,¨ or ¨delight in¨ which does not seem to me like it would be a good translation of what I was understanding from the context.
Can anyone tell me what English verb or expression the woman is using and what it means? Or tell me if regodearse can also mean brooding over negative things?
No need to be puzzled! There is method in our madness. The 'r' is simply used for linking when it's followed by a vowel.
In non-rhotic accents, the final syllable of the names 'Oliver' and 'Emma', for example, sound the same: both are pronounced as an 'uh' sound i.e. /ɒlivə/ and /emə/. If they're said in isolation or followed by a consonant, there is no 'r' in at the end of either name - we pronounce them both with a schwa /ə/ at the end.
However, if the 'r' is there in the spelling, it's always added back in as a link when the next sound is a vowel. This means that 'Oliver and Emma' is always pronounced 'Olive(r) and Emma', suga(r) and spice, and so on. The sequence of syllables is much easier to say when it has a linking 'r'.
Some of us do the same process to ease the pronunciation, even when there is no 'r' in the word. For example, 'Emma(r) and Oliver'. This intrusive 'r' is simply an over-application of a phonological habit - we are so accustomed to linking a schwa with a vowel by adding an 'r' in the middle, that we often do it regardless of whether the first word is spelled with an 'r' or not.
The interesting thing to me is that Su.Ki did not hear the ¨m¨ even though it was pointed out to her, because the context and her certainty of what the woman was saying over-rode everything else.
Yes, I agree that it was odd. Like being convinced that the blue-silver dress was black and gold (or whatever it was). Several factors coming in here, I think.
One, that I had already read the sentence and decided that 'wallow' would be the most logical word before I watched the video. I was expecting to hear 'wallow'. So, when I came to watch it, she would have to have said something very different indeed for me to have not heard 'wallow'.
Also, I was already attuned to her voice before I came to the sentence in question. As a result, the way she said that sequence of sounds was in keeping with the rest of her style of speaking and so didn't strike me as unusual.
Then, of course, there was a certain level of familiarity even before I watched the video. I'm from the north of England myself, and am aware that my own 'n's are quite 'loose'. In fact, I've just recorded myself saying the 'onward' in as natural a way as I could, and I'll admit that it did sound rather like 'ommud'.
How interesting! It's like Yanny and Laurel all over again.
I've just listened to Kseniia's clip, and now - at last - I can hear that 'm' sound. When I played the clip in isolation, divorced from its context, I focused purely on the sounds, and I finally heard the instrusive 'm'. I say intrusive, because it's not unlike the linking 'w' which can appear in 'Have you (w) ever?' or the 'y' in 'the (y) old man.' Or even the (definitely) intrusive 'p' in 'hamster'.
As I suspected, and Phil also suggested, it's because of the way that the 'n' of 'can' is articulated. The 'n' of can is rather 'loose', so the barely-there nasal 'n' combines with the bilabial 'w' of 'wallow' to create a nasal 'm' sound.
Kseniia is right that it sounds like "can (m)wallow", just as 'Have you ever?' sounds like "Have you(w) ever?".
When we listen to our native language, we generally ignore what we actually hear, and instead reinterpret it as we expect to hear. The language experience section of our brains overrides what our ears are telling us and tells us something that makes sense in the context. Native English speakers know that there's no such word as 'yold', which is why we don't 'hear' the 'y' in 'the old man' - our brains tell our ears to ignore the 'y'. Likewise, I, as a native speaker, expected to hear 'wallow' in that context, so that is what my brain told me to hear.
What is interesting here, though, is why native speakers Susan or Abdullah actually interpreted what they heard as 'mullow', even though they knew that 'wallow' would be the obvious word in the context. I wonder if we really do listen to unfamiliar accents of our native language with a different head on?
