Re: CHAT: The [+foreign] attribute

At 10:51 AM -0400 9/5/02, And Rosta wrote:
>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.
There are several native toponyms in Utah which have been borrowed
into English; they have all be Anglicized to the point where they are
unrecognizeable to the speakers of the languages they're borrowed
from, and so get borrowed back as a toponym where the language isn't
in widespread use. Examples include:

Ibapah ['aib@,pA] (from Goshute ['eBimba:] 'chalky white water')
Tooele [t_hu'wIl@] (from Goshute ['tu:,w1:ra] 'black bear')
Pariah [p_h@'rai@] (from Southern Paiute [pa:'r1Gija] 'elk' (lit: water deer)
Parowan ['p_hEr@,wAn] (from Southern Paiute [pa:ro:G_want1_0] (fighting water)
Timpanogos [,t_hImp@'nowg@s] (from Ute [t1m'pa:nukki(ts)] 'rock water running')
etc

The Goshutes who still speak their language use the native
pronunciation of Ibapah, but none of them use the native
pronunciation of Tooele. I don't know of any Paiute/Ute speakers who
still use native pronunciations of the other place names.

>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.
There's been a lot of fuss made about the lack of diversity on
American television. While there are sitcoms depicting
African-American families, they tend to cluster on the smaller
networks (Fox, UPN), and until last season, there were no current
series with Hispanics in prominent roles (American Family, now only
on PBS, and George Lopez). So your picture of American
multiculturalism is seriously skewed if you're relying on television
programs.

>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.
I think that you're right; every semester I'm confronted with a lot
of linguistic insecurity on the part of the students. They want to
know how to speak "correctly". This is especially true of the native
Utahns.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                                             Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"No theory can exclude everything that is wrong, poor, or even
detestable, or include everything that is right, good, or beautiful."
- Arnold Schoenberg