Re: YAEPT: Voiceless TH in whether, worthy

Apropos of 'plaza', Mark J. Reed wrote:
> I meant that it was weird that they [the English] pronounce it
> Spanishly. The particular subset of Spanishliness is only relevant
> inasmuch as pronouncing it a-la American Spanish would probably
> sound pretty much the same as the English rendering, modulo the
> voicing of the /z/.
Oh, I see what you mean. Well, the most common pronunciation is probably
/plA:z@/, using English phonemes, but I suspect most people feel it to
be a foreign word and vacillate accordingly, depending on their
knowledge of Spanish and their expectations of their audience's
knowledge. I've certainly heard both /T/ and /s/ in the 'z' place, but
very infrequently if ever with two Spanishesque /a/ vowels - it'd sound
a bit pretentious.

'Ibiza' OTOH varies only in the first vowel - /aI/ or /I/ - and
otherwise only with the speaker's accent. Many of Thomas Weir's teeming
hordes would have something like [OIbi:f@] :)

Jonathan.

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