Lars

[Dennis R. Preston]

Of course, I was speaking of the process among Norwegian language
users in the US and of the speech communities of non-Norwegian
speakers who they influenced and were influenced by. Your shortcut is
surely the right one for English-speaking readers.

dInIs





>On Mon, 22 Jul 2002, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>
>#Actually, "Lars" with a devoiced final consonant is already a
>#modification from the Norwegian /sh/ (for "rs"), but, just like
>#Polish "rz" (which is simply /zh/, we don't seem to be able to resist
>#those /r/s, so we get two stages of modification /lash/ -> /lars/ ->
>#/larz/.
>
>Isn't that /sh/ actually a retroflex? Or is that only in Swedish?
>
>I think that the process you're positing is more complicated than
>necessary for most US speakers outside of the Norwegian settlement area
>in the upper Midwest. I *read* the name "Lars" in many sources long,
>long before I ever heard any authentic pronunciation of it, and the
>default English phonemic realization of that orthography is /larz/.
>Spelling pronunciation is the simplest explanation.
>
>-- Mark A. Mandel

--
Dennis R. Preston
Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Languages
740 Wells Hall A
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
Office - (517) 353-0740
Fax - (517) 432-2736