Re: CHAT: "boocoo"

Mark J. Reed scripsit:

> "avay" [@'vei] out of "avec" /@'vEk/?  That's just terrible.
I was wondering about that; perhaps some singer or group is so ignorant
as to believe that "avec" is pronounced with a silent final letter?

> On the other hand, I don't know how we got "Cherokee" ['tSEr\@ki]
> out of "Tsalagi" /tsAlAgi/,
That seems easy enough:  r/l and s/S interchange are straightforward.
As for [Er\], it was probably [Ar\] in earlier days, a sound-change
now mostly backed out in AmE but surviving in a few names like Clark < clerk
and the word "varsity" < university.

> or "Japan" [dZ@'p&n] out of "Nippon"
Probably through some kind of Chinese, like "ribenguo" or the like.
Chinese initial "r" is pretty close to /Z/.

> They really named BOCU-1 after "beaucoups"?  How, uhm,  cute. :)
The epigraph for the 2001 draft of the BOCU documentation says
"Il faut avoir beaucoup étudié pour savoir peu (Montesquieu)".

--
John Cowan   jcowan@reutershealth.com   http://www.reutershealth.com
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