Re: English syllable structure

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).
And although there is a partial phonological rationale for that dialect
difference, it also seems to me that it is a further symptom of the
tendency in matters of Learning and High Kulchur (to which domain Foreign
belongs) for the English to be arrogantly insular and the Americans to be
diffidently catechumenical.

--And.

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