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

James Worlton wrote:

>
>
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>>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.)
>>
>>
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>I can't think of any specific examples, but yes, I have had similar
>experiences. I think a lot of times it happens with scientific words that I
>haven't seen before.
>
> I don't know how common this FLOES is, but its inverse is all too common:
> FLUES, (Under-Exposure), where people pronounce foreign words as if they were
> English. Drives me nuts.
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The former annoys the hell out of me, though(unfortunately), I do it all
the time.  The latter only annoys me in the context of foreign
languages.   In an English sentence,  it's pretty natural  to convert
such things into English-oid pronunciations - or at least,
pronunciations that are legal in English.

For instance, pronouncing 'karaoke' [karaoke] would be wrong.  [a] and
[o] never appear together in English, and  [e]  simply doesn't exist.
[kari@uki(or variants)] is the  legal English pronunciation that hurts
my ears the least.

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