Re: YAEPT: How you pronunce foreign place names

T. A. McLeay wrote:

> Wilfully ignorant? I don't think so. Particularly in a language like
> English which has been borrowing by diverse dialects over a long time,
> the nearest English phonemes in one dialect won't always correspond to
> those in another, and English speakers are much more likely to learn
> of a place from other English speakers than people who come from a
> place. I'd say this was much more the cause than anything; personal
> names are much more likely to have anglicisations quite close to the
> original phonemes than places or famous people's names, at least IME
> in Australia.
I didn't say "I think everyone who does this is ignorant".  I just said
it /sounds/ that way to me, so I avoid using such pronunciations
(of course, unless my rule (1) applies, which is a lot of the time!)
I know there are very good reasons for it - it's just a preference I
have, that's all.  Sorry if that wasn't clear!


> I thought Iraq in Arabic had a long vowel? At least, the
> transliteration of the Arabic on Wikipedia is _'al-'Irāq_ (asciified:
> 'al-`Ira:q), and the Arabic writing has an aleph in the right place,
> which I think is used for a long a.
Fair enough then - "Iraq" isn't an example of what I was talking about.
I still pronounce it that way, though - I guess it's because I don't
use /A/ in my accent, AFAIK, and because that kind of long A feels
slightly alien to me here in non-trap-bath-split-land...


> > /b@'lonj/ rather than [...] /b@'loin/
> Although I don't think I've ever heard the name pronounced, I think
> the common anglicisation you give is not so inexplicable. /lonj/ is
> simply an impossible syllable in English /j/ must always preceed a
> vowel.
Well OK.  I suppose that unless it does precede a vowel in the following
word, I just put a tiny /-@/ there.  I still maintain that it sounds
a lot closer that way, though.

And yeah, I probably do mean /J/.  See disclaimer. :-)


K.