Hi!
Mark J. Reed writes:
> When sufficiently educated (whether formally or via life experience),
> Anglophones have two distinct sets of rules for converting unfamiliar
> written words to speech sounds: one for English words and one for
> "foreign" words. The latter includes the Latin vowels, /Z/ or /j/ for
> |j|, etc. So unfamiliar names often come out with a pronunciation
> that conforms to neither Englsh or native patterns.
Germans typically pronounce 'Seoul' /se:?u:l/ (I think Carsten listed
that) for a similar reason: it looks French ('Séoul'). That the
graphemes are S-eo-u-l instead of S-e-ou-l is simply too much.
The French seem to have exactly the same problem with that city.
**Henrik