Re: How to Make Chicken Cacciatore (was: phonetics by guesswork)

Philippe Caquant wrote:
> --- Tristan Mc Leay <kesuari@...> wrote:
>
>>French journos aren't illiterate. They're just
>>French.
>
>
> Perhaps "illiterate" isn't the right term. But I very
> much would like somebody to explain me why, even after
> having spent some weeks, on months, on the spot, a
> French reporter or journalist is unable to pronounce
> 'Srebrenica' or 'Ludwigshafen' or whatever looking a
> little bit exotic.
Perhaps they do it because /lydwigSa'fEn/ (IIRC) is the correct
pronunciation of 'Ludwigshafen' in French. If someone went off and
started saying /ludviksha:f@n/ (I assume) they would seem 'utterly
ridiculous' and 'will almost surely raise laughter and sarcasm
around'---your words, not mine!

>And why the most respected French
> newspaper, "Le Monde", is unable to write correctly
> "Vesteraalen" (I also write it uncorrectly here, but I
> know it, and I'm not "Le Monde") in a big title for a
> full page article about... Vesteraalen Islands.
How is it written correctly? Is it meant to be 'Vesterålen'? It's
perfectly legitimate to transliterate 'å' as 'aa', especially in
languages that don't use 'å'. I have no idea about _Le Monde_'s setup,
but perhaps typing 'å' is difficult, or perhaps getting a å to turn up
nicely isn't easy, or perhaps they just don't feel the need to introduce
a new character. Just like English writes <cafe>, <facade>, <Sao Paulo>,
<Fuerher>/<Fuhrer>. If Mr Ån (which may or may not be a name) decides he
wants to register a domain name, he quite happily registers mraan.com.
In fact, there's a domain name <vesteraalen.net>, and even the English
on that page doesn't look very English to me :)

> People sometimes tell me that my English pronunciation
> is good. Why is it so ? Because I didn't learn English
> at school (I was learning German at the time), but
> with tapes recorded by English natives. What's funny
> is that even the French pronouncing English the
> "French" way sometimes tell me that, so that means
> that they know that their pronunciation is not too
> good, and they have an idea of how it should be, but
> they just feel sort of ashamed of pronouncing
> not-the-French-way. There is a national psychological
> problem in there, that's for sure.
Personally I hate it when EFL speakers learn English pronunciation
perfectly, unless they've learnt the rest of the language perfectly,
too. Very annoying when a European asks for a hotdog in their
practically prefect American accent (or at least, close enough to fool
me for that second that counts) and then doesn't know what 'sold out' means!

> (Also typical, the fact that, once they have learned
> some English, French people assume that all other
> languages in the world should more or less conform to
> the same rules. In fact, they seem to think that there
> are two kinds of people in the world: the French, and
> the others. That's why they will pronounce the German
> "w" just like the English, since both Germans and
> English are foreigners. There is an expression about
> that: "il parle en étranger" (he's talking foreign).
> Everything that is not French is foreign, and further
> distinctions are of little interest.)
I'm inclined to think you're hypersensitive (as in over... hypo- and
hyper- are mostly homonyms for me!) about this. I've only just written:

: ... French is not German. (Except in English, when all foreign
: languages are essentially French.)

I really don't think it's that much of an issue. Language is just a way
to communicate.

Alternatively, look at it this way:
  You're stressing way too much about something that I don't think
matters in the long run. I haven't heard of anyone dying because the
French refuse to pronounce forn properly. You'll probably find almost
everyone does it. Meanwhile, Australians (and Americans I think) will
continue to say 'England' and refer to Britain, say 'Holland' and refer
to the Netherlands, forget the accents on cafés or use the wrong one,
and everyone will be happy. That's an order from me, the Inevitable
Indisputable Overlord of the World.

--
| Tristan.               |       To be nobody-but-yourself in a world
| kesuari@yahoo!.com.au  |  which is doing its best to, night and day,
|                        |                 to make you everybody else---
|                        |          means to fight the hardest battle
|                        |            which any human being can fight;
|                        |                    and never stop fighting.
|                        |      --- E. E. Cummings, "A Miscellany"
|                        |
|                        |     In the fight between you and the world,
|                        |                             back the world.
|                        |      --- Franz Kafka,
|                        |         "RS's 1974 Expectation of Days"

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