Re: CHAT: Pronunciation (Re: Whiteness?)

On Thu, 7 Sep 2000, Barry Garcia wrote:

> My mother thinks i'm being pretentious whenever I repeat a word that she
> should know how to say correctly. I am not rude about it, i just repeat
> the word after she says it if she mispronounces it (she constantly
> mispronounces sushi as /SuSi/, and i KNOW she can say /suSi/ because i've
> heard her say it right many times). Now, don't get me wrong, I have a LOT
> of patience for people's pronunciation of words (in a regular conversation
> I try not to correct them, unless the word theyre saying is pronounced so
> far off of the mark i can't understand them at all). But, i do give people
> a chance. My mother, while she doesnt say Spanish words correctly most of
> the time (i'm not talking of the ones that have been absorbed into English
> like Barrio or Rodeo), does try and I give her props for that.
<rueful look>  You should've seen my IB 20th Century history class.  We
had *three* Germans, and when we got to the WWII section, well, they
were vastly amused.  I swear I tried to get ö in Röhm, but I just
couldn't manage it at the time.  OTOH, I winced whenever a friend
pronounced Weimar "waI" instead of "vaI" (I'm not going to attempt to IPA
the whole thing).

I know for a while, when I was teaching myself German, I was pronouncing
"Familie" with "ie" as "i" rather than the sort of "ya" sound at the
end.  Overregularization?  I dunno.  But the pronunciation guide *said*
"ie" was as in "free", darnit....

With foreign words, *if* someone's around to correct me, I try.  But
sometimes I come across a word in a language for which I've never heard a
speaker.  :-(

YHL