Re: Cloak room... x: [YAEUT] Lexical variation survey

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 10:08 AM, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
>  Mark J. Reed writes:
>  > On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 9:43 AM, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
>  >>  BTW, I pronounce['Toilette'] /to'lEt@/, because it's German! :-)
>  >
>  > ... so what happened to the <i>?
>
>  It's a germanised form from the French /twalEt/.  No /i/ there.
Well, make up your mind.  Is it German or is it Germanized French? :)

Seriously, though, the German pronunciation is clearly not based on
the French pronunciation (that might come out something like
/tva'lEt/) but on the French orthography.   I'd have expected <oi> to
come out /oi/, but given that German diphthongs in general sound
nothing like the two vowels used to write them, that was a silly
expectation on my part. :)   Still, having a silent letter there
doesn't feel very German to me...

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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