Re: YAEPT: How you pronunce foreign place names

Quoting caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...>:

> >>Kinetic <kinetic_wab@...> wrote:
>
> >>But examples of things I do say are: Boulogne /b@'lonj/ rather
> >>than the very common yet inexplicable /b@'loin/;
>
> >"T. A. McLeay" <relay@...> wrote:
>
> >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. And assuming 'gne' actually represents a /J/, the nearest
> >English adaptation in that context frequently actually is /-in/. I
> >think how /J/ sounds to people without palatal phonemes has actually
> >be discussed on this list before.
>
> AHD gives an option:
> 1) /bu"lon/ (which I use) or
> 2) /bu"lOin/.
>
> Sometimes that final -gne in French is rendered as a simple /n/ as
> in /S{m"pen/.
What phoneme are you indicating as /e/? If the good ol' "long a" (as in SANE),
surely the offglide relates to the french palatal. If "short e" (RED), your
pronunciation may be somewhat unusual - the AHD has it as /S&m.pejn/, which also
is the pronunciation I've heard and picked up.

                                                   Andreas