Re: CHAT: The [+foreign] attribute

"Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...>
> Quoting And Rosta :
> > 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?
"neesh" is also a spelling pronunciation.

It's probably true that speakers are more likely to nativize the
pronunciation of words from languages they're unfamiliar with
than from languages they're familiar with.

> Far more Britons have exposure to French, through schooling
> or through travel, than to Spanish.
Schooling yes. Travel, definitely not. Only posh Britons travel to
France. The unposh go to Spain and Greece. It's schooling that
makes [+foreign] default to [+french].

> 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".
Is America more multicultural? I don't know, but it doesn't seem so
to me, who lives in the one country and avidly watches the telly of
the other.

As for the making a greater effort to be correct, I think we've disagreed
about this before. Individuals in each country conform to the local
cultural norms, and my impression is that the local cultural norm in
America is more prescriptivist. But that takes into a whole other
debate that is irrelevant not only to conlang but also even to linguistics.

>
> (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],
No, [greIs] would be a nativized pronunc, not a mispronunc. I meant [grA], as
in "pate de foie gras" [fwA grA].

> [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 see it written as "momento" and hear it pronounced as "moe-mento" --
as John has already noted, AmE does less schwa reduction than BrE.
In Britain, it is a law that absolutely every film from whatevr country
must be advertised with a voiceover done by deepvoiced white
American male; currently a film called "Memento" is being advertised by
this deep voice purring "moe-mento".

--And.
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