Re: phonology of borrowed words

 --- Muke Tever <mktvr@...> wrote: > From:
"Nik Taylor" <yonjuuni@...>
> > 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.
> >
> > Sometimes I think that borrowings are deliberately
> distorted.  :-)
> > Like, I heard my grandfather pronounce "harakiri"
> like "Harry Karry"
> > (something like /hIrikIri/), which seems to me to
> be far more distorted
> > than can be explained by simply English phonology.
>  :-)
>
> I've heard "harry karry" before too (more like
> [hEri"kEri] maybe?).
>
> And then we get things like "hors d'oeuvres"
> pronounced with "d'oeurves" (that
> metathesis is not native to French, is it?)
>
just possibly it came via a non-rhotic accent. using
an english accent i would say it [O:'d3:v] ( omitting
the final /R/ of the french as /vr\/ isn't a
permissable english final by any stretch of the
imagination ). if you then transfer this to a rhotic
accent you get something like [Or'd3rv] . . . voila` !

bn

=====
bnathyuw | landan | arR
stamp the sunshine out | angelfish
your tears came like anaesthesia | phèdre

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