Re: phonology of borrowed words

Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> Borrowing is a complex feature, as much linguistic as it is social,
> so purely phonetic considerations cannot always explain why some
> word is borrowed in some way or another.
A substantial part of the introductory phonetics topic I was in this
year concerned observing how French, German, Italian and Spanish words
are pronounced in English, compared to the original pronounciations.

The most interesting cases were those where the class was split in
unexpected ways. For example, for most people the vowel in "genre"
was [O] as in "con", whereas I have always pronounced it [o] as in
"corn". I was surprised that my pronunciation was not more common.

Also, it was interesting that the pronunciation of some foreign words
has become _more_ authentic over time. For example, younger members of
the class consistently pronounced the final syllable of "reservoir"
[vwa], while only the very oldest members chose [vo:].

Next year I'm enrolled for another topic called, "Language, Culture
and Communication".

Adrian.

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