Re: CHAT: Tacos et al.

Quoting Tristan Alexander McLeay <anstouh@...>:

> On Wed, 12 Dec 2001, Anton Sherwood wrote:
> > America has a huge German-descended population,
> > and so <ei> /ai/ is very familiar from other loanwords.
> > (Yet <oe> and <eu> generally become /o:/ and /ju:/.)
>
> Yes, well /o:/ would be the closest equivalent of the vowel <oe>
> stands for in American, wouldn't it?
American English doesn't really have anything very
much like it acoustically, so we tend to go with
spelling pronunciations with nonnaturalized German
loan terms (e.g., the current Chancellor's last name
is <Schröder> [Sroudr=]), and usually leave off the
umlaut in print, too.

> > > Something else that grates is Brits referring to Volkswagens as
> > > /volksw(ae)g@n/!
> >
> > You don't mind when Americans say it?
>
> Definately /vQlksw{g@n/ Down Under, no matter what the Americans say.
Most Americans, in my experience, pronounce it as a native
English word:  /vouksw&g@n/ or, if you're more aware of the
spelling, /volksw&g@n/.  Which reminds me:  has anyone noticed
that people have been using the word "folks" /fouks/ as a
synonym with "people (in general)" more often lately? I could
swear I started noticing this before Bush took office.

> > Nicaragua and Anguilla with /gju@/ (in certain parts of the Old
> > World); karaoke /kerioki/ ...
>
> Australia isn't the Old World, is it? :)
It is not considered such linguistically, no. In Johanna
Nichols' new book on linguistic typology and long range
comparison (_Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time_),
she defines the New and Old world according to when
mankind first arrived. Papua New Guinea, Australia,
and North and South America were all settled starting
about 70 thousand years ago, as opposed to around
100 thousand years ago for the Old World languages, and
so they get the label "New World".

> And `karaoke' is generally rendered as /k{ri8uki/ here.
In many Western US dialects, /&/ falls together with /E/
before /r/, which, since /E/ also often merges with /e/,
is why lots of them cannot distinguish the triplet 'marry',
'merry' and 'Mary'.

=====================================================================
Thomas Wier <trwier@...> <http://home.uchicago.edu/~trwier>

             "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
Dept. of Linguistics  mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
1010 E. 59th Street   and not complete one road that has no turn"
Chicago, IL 60637     Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers

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