Re: Metathesis?

Joe wrote:
>Thomas Wier wrote:
>>>From: "mike poxon" <mike@...>
>>>
>>>>Tom Wier wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>So what is the correct pronunciation of "Chipotle"?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>Well, in Spanish, I believe the syllabification goes [tSi.pot.le].
>>>>A reasonable anglicization of it would be [tSI.powt.ley], adjusting
>>>>for English's lack of pure vowels.  (Unless you're from Minnesota!
>>>>They have no excuse! 8P)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Re Chipotle: I'd always thought that the digraph "tl" in Aztecan languages
>>>was simply how the Spanish wrote the phoneme /K/ or a similar sound, rather
>>>than /t/ plus /l/.
Actually, I realized that I didn't actually answer this comment.
To clarify, the grapheme <tl> in all varieties of Nahuatl with
which I am familiar, including both classical and modern spoken
varieties, represents a voiceless lateral *affricate*, not a
fricative.  Phonetically, this is quite like [t] plus [l], and
as such <tl> is a reasonable representation.

>>Spanish is, helas, not Nahuatl.  I would need to get native speaker
>>intuitions on this, but I think that in this case Spanish would
>>syllabify this cluster as coda plus simple onset, rather than
>>open syllable plus complex onset.  I'm pretty sure this word is
>>a Spanish one, since Spanish tends to change the absolutive
>>suffix of Nahuatl, -tl/-tli, into something less complex. E.g.
>>Nahuatl _ko:yotl_ --> Spanish _coyote_.
>
>Actually, according to Wikipedia, it comes from Nahuatl 'chipoctli'.
>Not sure how true that is.
Note that I wasn't giving an etymology of <Chipotle>;  I was
discussing processes by which Spanish deforms the original
Nahuatl.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637