Re: English syllable structure

Thomas Weir:
> 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).
>
> 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]).
How many monomorphemic native words have /owst@(r)/ and /A:st@(r)/
in AmE? You could argue that there are none, _coaster_ being an
opaque derivation _coast+er_. I was suggesting that AmE pronunc
of _pasta_ and _costa_ violate native phonotactic constraints on
morpheme structure.

> > 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.
>
> Or it could just be that America has had more Italian and
> Hispanic immigrant communities from which to pick up pronunciations
> closer to the original.
True for Hispanic but probably not for Italian. It is also the
case that /A:/ is the best AmE phonetic match for Italian /a/, while
/&/ is the best BrE match. And likewise for AmE /ow/ and BrE /Q/
matching Italian /o/.

BTW, BrE has /lA:teI/ for _latte_, but this is a borrowing from
AmE (Starbucks etc) not from Italian. It *ought* really to be
/'l&ti/. New borrowings from Italian keep /&/, e.g. /f@'k&tS@/,
_focaccia_.

> My old professor at UT, Robert King, once told me a story about
> a trip of his to London a few years back.  He was visiting with
> some woman there and they were discussing about a place to eat.
> She said: "Oh! There's this lovely new [t@.dZ&.n@u] restaurant
> around the corner!" (or to that effect, with that pronunciation).
> He said he shuddered inwardly, politely nodded and accepted her
> invitation.
I've never heard anyone saying _tejano_, so don't know how it's
generally pronounced here, if indeed has a general pronunciation.
But certainly this well illustrates the cultural difference: in
AmE the 'right' way to pronounce Foreign is Foreign, while in
BrE the 'right' way to pronounce Foreign is Native. Of course,
AmE exerts a heavy cultural influence on BrE, so this is changing.
(Cf. AmE /dA:n wA:n/, old BrE /dQn dZu:@n/, mod BrE /dQn w&n/,
_Don Juan_.)

--And.