Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

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

From:And Rosta <a.rosta@...>
Date:Monday, February 23, 2004, 16:59
John Cowan:
> Trebor Jung scripsit: > > > Ah, reminds me of the time (among a few) that I heard someone pronounce > > the <sz> in the Hungarian name <L\341szl\363> as [z] (the correct > > pronunciation is [s]). In this case (now that I think about it) one > > person who I remember mispronouncing <sz> was married to a Hungarian! > > An actual Hungarian, or a North American of Hungarian origin? I think > that most Laszlos in N.A. call themselves ['l&zlou].
In English, /s/ and /z/ are neutralized morpheme-internally before sonorants in the following onset. So ['l&zlou] is not merely a spelling pronunciation, but a regular anglicization. That said, I have noticed that <sz> in Hungarian surnames of English people does get done as /z/ (e.g. the English poet George Szirtes is called /'z3:ti:z/ by others &, I believe, himself, instead of (in English phonology) /'sI@tES/; I expect he got fed up of correcting mispronunciations of his name and acquiesced in its mispronounciation, just as I have done with mine for the last ten years or so, and as, say, Italoamericans with <gli> in their names do). Come to think of it, <zs> gets turned into /z/ too. And while Kovacs ends in /ks/, I recall an American-footballer called Larry Csonka, who was rendered Zonka (as if, perhaps, the spellings were <Kovax> and <Xonka>?). --And.

Reply

<jcowan@...>