Re: YAEPT alert! [Re: Not phonetic but ___???]
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, April 16, 2004, 21:03 |
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On Fri, Apr 16, 2004 at 09:47:47PM +0200, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> That's because there's no [gUs] and no [kuk] in English
Well, in some dialects the proper name "Gus" is pronounced [gUs]
(although it's [gVs] around here), and as someone else pointed out on
this thread, there is indeed a [kuk]. A "kook" is slang for a person
who is "kooky" - that is, wacky, crazy, wild, etc. But usually context
is enough to avoid confusion, and even the most insular American gets a
fair amount of exposure to English spoken with a variety of non-native accents
on television, etc.
Incidentally, to my non-native-French ear it seems that the closest French
vowel to [U] is the one in "oeuf".
-Mark
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