Re: OT: German reputation
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, December 14, 2004, 16:35 |
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On Tue, Dec 14, 2004 at 03:02:35PM -0000, caeruleancentaur wrote:
> IMO that is not correct. I don't believe that "adios" is a 3-
> syllable word. I've always understood the "i" to indicate a
> palatalization of the "d."
No, it doesn't indicate palatalization. Even assuming /dios/ to be
monosyllabic, it's a /d/ phoneme followed by a full /j/ phoneme. The
realization of the /d/ may of course be palatalized, but that's just a
side effect - there is a full /j/ there.
> One of my linguistic pet peeves is to hear Americans pronounce the
> Italian name Giovanni as gee-o-van-ni.
Well, that's a completely diferent situation. The |i| there is only
historically a palatalizer; in the modern graphy it exists only to
indicate that it's /dZo/ rather than /go/. In that sense it's
more akin to the |u| in |guitar|, which is not a labializer, than it
is to the |i| in |dios|.
-Marcos