Re: CHAT French undies (was: Re: Linguistic Terminology)

Raymond A. Brown wrote:

> At 7:33 pm -0500 5/1/99, Steg Belsky wrote:
> >On Tue, 5 Jan 1999 14:18:46 -0600 Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> writes=
:
> >>Tom Wier wrote:
> >>> What this writer
> >>> meant was such forms as the English pronunciation of "lengerie" as
>                                                            ^ "lingerie"
> Or is the spelling also de-frenchified in America?
Nope, sorry.  That was my typo ;-)

> >>> /lA~Z@rei/
> >
> >>I usually hear /'lan.Zr=3D.ej/.  I've also hear a (deliberate)
> >>pronunciation of /'liN.gr=3D.i/  :-)
> >
> >I think i've only heard it, throughly (or pretty much) Anglicized, as
> >/lan dZ@ 'rej/ .
Well, I just heard it on the radio today, and in my area at least, it'sdi=
stinctly
/lA~Z@rei/.

> Weird - why pronounce and ending spelt/spelled -RIE as /rei/ or /rej/ ?=
??
> The only pronunciations I've ever heard are the southern Brit
> anglicizations /'l&nZ@ri/ or something approaching the French /lE~Z'Ri/
As a preliminary sidenote, you might want to note that in many varieties =
of
British English, /&/ phonetically is quite a bit closer to the many Europ=
ean
values of /a/, in that it's backer and I think a bit lower than the Ameri=
can equivalent
phoneme (which explains, in part, why Americans will tend to say e.g. /tA=
kou/ --
a really back vowel -- where Brits might say /t&k@u/; both are "wrong",
in that they aren't the /a/ of Spanish).  So, there too, the Brits are
hypercorrecting -- trying to get a foreign sounding /a/, which, in most
dialects there, is borrowed as /&/.

To answer your question, though, as I said, the final /ei/ has to do with
a general confusion on the part of hearers who hear /ei/ in words like "l=
ibert=E9"
(even though it's really /E/ - for most English dialects, final lax vowel=
s
are not allowed, with the notable common exception of /I/), and then
generalize that to other French loan words.  They do it for the same reas=
on
they use the wrong vowel for the first <i> in "lingerie":  because it "so=
unds"
more foreign.  Dunno why they don't investigate to see what the real fore=
ign
values are. ;-)


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Tom Wier <twier@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

"Only the educated are free." - Epictetus
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