Re: CHAT: The [+foreign] attribute

=?iso-8859-1?q?bnathyuw?= scripsit:

> i've also noticed that americans seem more likely to
> put the stress of words like 'brochure' 'cha^teau' &c
> on the final syllable, whilst the british transfer it
> to the first, and in the case of 'brochure' reduce the
> final syllable ( ['br\3US@] )
Indeed, Ray Brown claims that there are no finally stressed Fremdwoerter
in BrE at all (I hit him with "giraffe", but he replied "That's a
monosyllable"), whereas AmE is just full of them: "garage" [g@'rA(d)Z] is
another well-known example.  In general, there are fewer vowel reductions
and syncopations in AmE as well: "lavatory" has four syllables, only
the second and fourth of which are schwa.

The extreme example of this is the jargon of lawyers, judges, and
other people around the courts here in New York City, who consistently
say [difEnd&nt] and [dZurOr] rather than the normal [difEnd@nt] and
[dZur@(r)].

--
A mosquito cried out in his pain,               John Cowan
"A chemist has poisoned my brain!"              http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
        The cause of his sorrow                 http://www.reutershealth.com
        Was para-dichloro-                      jcowan@reutershealth.com
Diphenyltrichloroethane.                                (aka DDT)

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