Re: CHAT: barbarisms

On Tue, 15 May 2001, Raymond Brown wrote:

> At 9:22 am -0600 14/5/01, dirk elzinga wrote:
> >On Mon, 14 May 2001, BP Jonsson wrote:
> >
> >> At 08:22 2001-05-13 -0600, dirk elzinga wrote:
> >>
> >> >My surname is most often pronounced with stress on the
> >> >penultima, [El.'ziN.g@] rather than with native Frisian initial
> >> >syllable stress: ['El.ziN.Xa]. The English accentuation fits the
> >> >"Latinate" pattern, but "Elzinga" is certainly not a name taken
> >> >from Classical Antiquity.
>
> Yes, but {z} is not found in native Latin words (or names) and, in any
> case; the Latinate pronunciation never suggested itself to me for one born
> in 20th cent. Utah  ;)
I think that my use of the term "Latinate" may be misleading;
perhaps "foreign" or "non-native" may be better. I've noticed
that many Japanese names also receive this stress pattern, and
they're obviously not Latin :-).

> >> Which pronunciation do you use yourself?
> >
> >When I was in the Netherlands, I used the Frisian/Dutch
> >pronunciation (of course!). Here, I use the Anglicized
> >['El.'ziN.g@] since I find that people are too disconcerted to
> >hear: 1) initial stress on a word of more than two syllables
> >which ends in a vowel, and 2) the Dutch velar fricative.
>
> You've confused me a little.  Ain't [X] the uvular fricative?  I thought
> the velar fricative was [x].
It is indeed. I'm always a little perplexed as to the proper
description of the (Northern) pronunciation of <g> and <ch> in
Dutch. It seems velar, but it is definitely "rougher" (yes,
that's a technical phonetic term :-). In any case, the <X> was a
typo for <x>, which is what I did intend to write.

> >Some
> >people do give the name initial stress ['El.ziN.g@], but the
> >final vowel annoyingly often becomes a syllabic /r/ (!).
>
> Interesting - I'd always thought of Elzinga as being stressed on the first
> syllable; it never occurred to me to do otherwise (and I certainly don't
> add any final /r/!  )
From you, Ray, I wouldn't have expected it! :-)

> But, not realizing the name was originially Frisian, I'd never thought of
> pronouncing the {g} as [X].  FWI I'd always 'mentally' pronounced it
> ['ElzIN@].  Guess I'd better start pronouncing that {g} - but is it [x] or
> [X] I should use?  (I can't bring myself to use the penultimate stress)
If I had been more careful when composing my message, I would
have in fact transcribed the English initial stress variant of
my surname as ['ElziN@]; i.e., without the [g]. Chalk it up to a
week's worth of house guests and many a late night of Euchre and
Hearts with my brothers (whom I haven't seen in a year and a
half).

I am not dogmatic about the [g]/[x] issue. In English I prefer a
[g] (as opposed to no consonant) and initial stress, but I'll
answer to most reasonable approximations of my name. In the
Netherlands, the preferred pronuncation of my name seems to work
itself out without any prompting from me :-).

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga                          dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu

"The strong craving for a simple formula
has been the undoing of linguists."               - Edward Sapir