"Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...> writes:
> Quoting And Rosta <a.rosta@...>:
>
> > Kou:
> > > /nIk@rA:gju@/ sounds distinctly British (BBC) to my ears. Too, the
> > car
> > > "Jaguar" pronounced à la britannique sounds like /dZ&gju@/.
> >
> > In English English _Nicaragua_ and _jaguar_ rhyme in /&gju:@/.
> > /nIk@'r&gw@/ or (god help us!) /nIk@'rA:gw@/ would sound insufferably
> > pretentious. It seems to be symptomatic of the different ways that
> > English and American English do Foreign. E.g. Eng E renders _pasta_
> > and _costa_ as /p&st@/ and /kQst@/, as tho they were native E words,
> > whereas Am E does them as /pAst@/ and /kowst@/, i.e. with Am E
> > phonemes but Foreign phonotactics (alient for monomorphemic words).
Hmm..../pAst@/ and /kOst@/ for me...a native New Yorker. Why does there seem to be an
overwhelming tendency to think that there's ONE American pronunciation. You can
make generalizations like the one you do in the above paragraph.
>
> How do the American pronunciations you cite have alien phonotactics?
> "Costa" is distinguishable from "coaster" for me only from the final
> vowel, where I have r-coloring for <-er>. Because there is an enclitic
> version of "of" in my dialect, which has no /v/, "pasta" can rhyme
> in my dialect with "cost of" ("The cost of the food surprised me" =
> [D@.kAs.t@.D@.fu:d.sr=.praI(zd.mi]).
And here we have proof that there's different Dialect and Accent groups in
America. I say: "Costa" /kOst@/ "Coaster" /kowstr=/ "Cost of" /kOst@/ or /kOst
Uv/
And the sentence: [D@ kOst@ D@ fu:d s@praizd mi]
So...basically..there are many many different ways of pronouncing things here in America...I guess
that sums up my point, in a somewhat coherent fashion. :)
Elliott