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Re: CHAT: The [+foreign] attribute

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Thursday, September 5, 2002, 6:17
Quoting And Rosta <a.rosta@...>:

> John Cowan: > > There seems to be some evidence that for speakers of a language, there is > > some other specific language that all foreign words are assumed to be in. > > For English, it's French. > > I have the impression that Americans are more likely than British to > apply the [+foreign] feature to a word, too.
I dunno. My impression is that people mark [+foreign] in the context with which they are most familiar. Last time we had this discussion, I mentioned the woman in Britain who invited my professor to a restaurant that served [f@dZaIt@z], which would at the very least get you strange looks in most of the American Southwest where the word has been acquired through speech rather from reading. On the other hand, on _Are You Being Served?_, Capt. Peacock quite distinctly says [niS] rather than [nItS]. (Feel free to correct his assessment as incorrect.) What's in common with these two instances? Far more Britons have exposure to French, through schooling or through travel, than to Spanish. But conversely, far more Americans have direct exposure to Spanish, through schooling and through travel and in every day contacts, than to French. The result? More exposure means greater likelihood to pronounce things as the other language group does. And if pronouncing foreign words as the foreigners do is more common in America, this is probably a result of America being a more multicultural society, not because Americans make a greater effort to be "correct". (One cannot in all justice speak about "American" behavior in this respect. People in Vermont are far more likely to use French for their [+foreign] pronunciations than people in El Paso, say, are.)
> (Somewhat tangentially, the discussion (& mention of the "empan[y]ada" > in the text you posted the url to) prompts me to ask if anyone can > suggest additions to the following list of common mispronunciations of > nativized foreignisms, which I have collected from many many hours > of watching American TV programmes: > * coup de gras > * chaise lounge > * momento > * lingeré > * marquis/marquee of Queensbury [I only heard this once, so don't know > if it's common])
I gather you mean [ku d@ greIs], [SeIz l&UndZ] or [tSeIz l&UndZ], and [la~Z@reI] or [landz@reI], all of which are fairly common in America. However, under the rules of phonological reduction in most American dialects, both "momento" and "memento" would come out like [m@mEntoU]/[m@mIntoU], so I don't see how those could be mispronounced (if I understand you correctly). I could envision three pronunciations of <marquis>, only two of which I've heard: ['markwIs] (which refers to an English title of nobility), [mar'ki] (the French title), and *[mar'keI], which I've never heard before. You could add <niche> as [niS] or [nItS], the latter of which is probably more common in America. ========================================================================= Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally, Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. Chicago, IL 60637

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bnathyuw <bnathyuw@...>
Padraic Brown <elemtilas@...>