Re: Metathesis?

>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/.
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_.

 =========================================================================
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

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