Re: Finnish English

Quoting John Vertical <johnvertical@...>:

> Roger Mills  wrote:
> >
> >John Vertical wrote:
> > > Anyway, practically everyone here pronounces "New York" as
> > > /ny: jo:k/ or some variation thereof. The fronting applies widely
> > > to word-final /ju:/, and some people (like me) extend this to
> > > various other environments - at its worst, to all non-initial
> > > positions. The /y:/ in question tends to be a [y:] proper only in
> > > the speech of people with little to none English fluency.
> > > Eg. I pronounce "few new clues" as something like [fHu\ n_jHu\
> > > k_hlHu\s] and definitely not [fy: ny: kly:s]
> >
> >To me is sounds as if you've simply adopted the local pronunciation
> >of that  particular name, New York, which in turn is probably based
> >on Swedish _ny_  or maybe just some local deformation.......
>
> >Would you pronounce [ny:] in a less-known name, say, New Brunswick, New
> >Haven, Newton Upper Falls :-)))??
>
> Um, as explained, I would not pronounce *[y:]* in ANY English word (except
> maybe for parody reasons)... but what I call /y:/ I do use in all instances
> of "new". You're probably right about the Swedish influence, but this also
> applies to words where there is no instantly obvious Swedish cognate - say,
> "few".
If some Swedish input be welcome here, I'd like to mention that while the
Swedish cognates of English words with [ju] often have [y:], eg 'new'~'ny',
English loans with [ju] generally don't get adopted with /y:/. For instance, I,
when talking Swedish, pronounce "New York" as [nju\: jo:k].

ObTangent: As a kid, I sometimes used the spelling pronunciation [nEv jOr`k]. I
can't readily explain the short vowel in the first syllable, since short vowel
+ /v/ is *very* rare in Swedish, and the single following consonant ought
suggest a long vowel anyway.

                                                 Andreas