Re: CHAT: F.L.O.E.S.

Mark J. Reed wrote:

> Yesterday I went out to lunch.
>
> This is not a novel occurrence; I eat lunch out most days.  However, it
> is usually fast food from the food court or something quick from the
> employee cafeteria.  Yesterday I went to a nice seafood restaurant,
> purely due to time constraints: the food court was packed with delegates
> from a huge convention across the street, the employee cafeteria was
> packed with employees fleeing the food court, and I had only a little
> bit of time to eat lunch before a meeting.  So I went to the nice
> seafood restaurant in the building.
>
> As I was perusing the menu, a particular dish caught my eye: hake.
> Now, I had never eaten hake - had never even heard of it - but it was
> evidently some form of whitefish, and the preparation (baked with a
> horseradish crust) sounded delicious, so I ordered it.
>
> Or tried to.
>
> What I ordered was ['ha.ke].   Turns out that "hake" is pronounced
> [hejk].  The waiter laughingly corrected me (a no-no in waitiquette,
> but I appreciated it), and probably will continue to get some mileage
> out of my error.
>
> So I have diagnosed myself as suffering from F.L.O.E.S.: Foreign
> Language Over-Exposure Syndrome.  I seem to be unable to pronounce
> novel English words with any confidence, for fear that they might be
> borrowings.  In fact, that is my default assumption; I suppose it's the
> peril of a large vocabulary:  "Well, if *I've* never heard the word
> before, it *must* be a loan from another language!"  Getting something
> so simple wrong is a tad deflating, I must say.
>
> So have any of y'all had a similar experience?  Dish, dish!  (No pun
> intended.)
Well, when I was a kid a(n ammusment) park was open here north from Bogota.
It is called "Parque Jaime Duque".  One day they were handing fliers on the
park and when I saw them I asked my parents I wanted to go to the "Parque
[j\ejms djuk]"...  Well, Jaime is a common Spanish name [hajme], and Spanish
for Duque is [duke].

About pronunciation of foreign words, I usually note several "correct" ways
to pronounce them.  The first is to pronounce them as close as possible to
the original language, in both pronunciation and intonation.  This however
sound a little snobbish unless pronounced by a native of that foreign word.

The second attempt is to have a correct pronunciation of the phonemes, even
if alien to the spoken language, but adapt intonation to the spoken
language.  This sounds a little less snobbish.  It is usually intonation,
rather than pronunciation, that marks foreignicity.

Third, pronounce the word with the closest valid phonems in the spoken
language, but disregard pronunciation constrains in the spoken language.
i.e. Spanish does not allow to word initial clusters with 's', but it has
/s/: this attempt is similar to pronounce "snob" as /snob/ [snoB] without
the ephentetic /e/: [esnoB].

A fourth approach: apply all rules of the spoken language, including natural
constrains, phonems and intonation.  Here there are two possible approaches
when dealing with "unnatural" clusters of vowels or consonants: to add
epenthetics or to drop conflicting phonemes.

The last approach is to take the orthography and attempt to read it using
rules of the spoken language.

(well, the very last "acceptable" pronunciation: don't use the foreign word
but rather trasnlate it into the spoken language)

What I usually don't find tolerable is to pronounce a foreign word in the
wrong language: neither the original or the spoken language.  For example,
faking a French pronunciation of a German word when speaking in English.

I have noticed that when I give my name in the middle of a sentence in
English, I attempt an English pronunciation/entonation of Carlos
["k_h&rl@s].  Similarly when speaking in Swedish I attempt a Swedish
pronunciation/entonation ["k_hA:l`os] (with first tone).  In Spanish is, of
course ["karlos] (unaspirated [k]), sillably timed and so on.  I could also
go for [tSArlz] and [k_hA:l`].  (well, I am not sure on the exact
transcription, but that is the idea).

--
Carlos Eugenio Thompson Pinzón
http://chlewey.org/cv/es/

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