Re: CHAT: "boocoo"

On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 11:38:20AM -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> MJR> "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?
That I could believe.  Overgeneralization from the silent final C
in "Mackinac", perhaps?


> MJR> On the other hand, I don't know how we got "Cherokee" ['tSE`r\@ki]
> MJR> out of "Tsalagi" /tsAlAgi/,
>
> That seems easy enough:  r/l and s/S interchange are straightforward.
In general, yes, but it seems odd when coming into English, in which r/l
and s/S are phonemically distinct pairs (bar/ball, ass/ash).

> As for [E`r\], it was probably [A`r\] 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.
Ah, I hadn't made those connections.  But the "er" in both "clerk" and
"university" is just a syllabic [r\=], or at most [@`r\], whereas the
one in "Cherokee" is a full [E`r\].  Since those are, again, phonemically
distinct (sure/share), I wouldn't expect a sound change like that to
affect both equally.

> > 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/.
That would make sense.  Thanks.

-Mark

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